


take another world if another world will shake you

by darlingjustdont



Category: DCU (Comics)
Genre: Amnesia, Angst, Bruce is trying to be a good dad, Dick Grayson Needs a Hug, Dick Grayson is Ric Grayson, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Time Travel, canon is the sandbox i create my own castles out of and no one can stop me, i don't know how to tag comics, i have never read a comic in my life, new dad parenting struggles, sashaverse, tho it's light on the comfort a little
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-13
Updated: 2020-04-13
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:41:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 28,830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23634025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darlingjustdont/pseuds/darlingjustdont
Summary: dick shakes his head, his hair swinging and face still pale. out of the corner of his eye, ric catches bruce grimace.and suddenly everything falls into place and everything goes to shit.“holy shit,” he says and it feels like he’s got no control over his body, none over what comes out of his mouth.  “did i time travel?” he doesn’t wait for a reply, just whirls around to bruce, and jabs a finger at the kid. “are we the same fucking person?”ric grayson goes back in time, to everyone's dismay.
Relationships: Dick Grayson & Bruce Wayne
Comments: 33
Kudos: 232





	take another world if another world will shake you

**Author's Note:**

> hello friends!! 
> 
> welcome to another round of _sasha makes every character she loves sad: dick grayson edition!_ in my year or so perusing batfam fic, i realised there's a lot of time travel fic where a child version of dick meets a lot of the family, but not a lot where adult dick goes back in his own timeline. so, i decided to write it! i also thought the conceit of dick having no memory of himself or what he's supposed to be added a lot of intrigue, so that's why it's with ric instead of dick. i will admit, i haven't really read any comics with ric in them, so forgive me if the characterization is off. i did my best. 
> 
> big big thanks to kassie and jarka, as always, for being amazingly supportive and lovely when i whine or bounce ideas off of them. they're amazing and i love them. also kassie did a great job of beta-ing!!! we love talented and kind friends!! 
> 
> title is taken from "fall apart" by the careful ones (although it could very well be "take another one", i really can't tell. but world worked better for me). 
> 
> enjoy xx

the lights go slip-slidey across his vision and it makes him feel sick, makes his stomach turn and his head ache in ways that are too familiar and not familiar at all. a lot of things are settled in that space, like a word that’s on the tip of his tongue and won’t come out, except it’s memories and relationships and his goddamn identity that’s stuck in the muddled mess of his brain. 

the light shifts again, his belly heaves, and he runs for the door and the coolness of outside, leaving the muted chaos of the bar behind him. it only takes a few steps before he finds darkness and a damp wall to lean against, retching in an alleyway. it tastes vaguely like tequila, burning twice as bad coming up as it went down. 

something, barely even a noise, makes his head pop up, one of those familiar-but-not habits that he can’t quite stop from doing, and makes him focus on the other end of the alleyway. 

“oh,” he groans after a second, tracing the ever-so-slightly darker outline against the brick. “it’s you.”

there’s nothing in the figure that shows surprise but he can recognise it anyway and it makes him annoyed, makes him biting.

“i thought i told you to fuck off and leave me alone.”

on second thought, it could be the tequila making him annoyed. the point still stands. 

batman steps closer, his cape rippling around him like water. “i don’t know who you are.”

“oh, go to hell. that’s not funny. goddamn, i knew you took things literally but that is a step too fuckin’ far. well, i don’t really _know_ but i inferred. is that a skill i learned from you?”

“i don’t know you,” bruce repeats, a little more quizzical this time. ric rolls his eyes. his patience wore out sometime after the lights went blurry and hasn’t come back, so he just laughs bitterly, spitting the taste of vomit out of his mouth.

“i’m going home,” he grumbles and wobbles his way to the parking lot. home, at this point, is his car-turned-taxi but fucking bruce doesn’t need to know that one. he doesn’t need to know anything. 

“what did you say your name was?”

“reaaaaaal funny, b,” he slurs over his shoulder, trying to find his car in the weird light coming off the street lamps. “and they call me an amnesiac. jesus.”

“just— humor me.”

“y’don’t have a sense of humor,” he says under his breath. “but fine. i’m ric, remember? ric fucking grayson, the boy fucking wonder. or something like that. now where the _fuck_ is my car?”

“you’re drunk,” bruce says flatly. ric snorts. 

“yeah, no shit, sherlock.”

“you shouldn’t be driving.”

“how else am i gonna get where i need to be?” he hits the pavement wrong and his legs go wobbly. “whoa.”

the lights do their weird slidey thing again and it makes his head spin, the whole world blurring in front of his eyes. it’s psychedelic, almost, trippy. 

“whoa,” he says again and pitches forward as the world goes black. 

he wakes up somewhere distantly familiar again, like he knows where he is as he’s coming up out of sleep but it fades away as soon as he’s aware of it. he snaps open his eyes and stares up at a craggy, far-off ceiling. it smells damp and he can hear the whisper of wings up in the rafters. 

“god,” he groans, pushing one hand across his face. “this fucking sucks. m’pretty sure this is kidnapping.” 

“you fainted,” bruce says dryly from his place at the computers. ric squints in his direction. “where else did you want me to bring you?” 

“not to the batcave, that’s for sure.” 

“bat… cave?” 

“mmhm,” says ric, closing his eyes. his head hurts a lot, a slicing pain right behind his eyeballs. could be the tequila, could be the passing out. “you could’ve just dropped me off at the hospital.” 

“you said your name was ric grayson?” 

“uh huh.”

“how are you related to john and mary grayson?”

ric rolls over to look at him, silhouetted against the computer screens. “you’re joking, right?”

bruce doesn’t respond. ric sighs and swings his legs off the gurney, only wobbling a little bit. 

“i don’t know what kind of fucked up game you’re playing, bruce, but i don’t like it. why can’t any of you dickheads leave me _alone_?”

bruce freezes again. “bruce?”

“yeah, _you_ , you dumbass.”

“why did you call me that?” he asks sharply and ric pauses by the stairs to frown at him again. 

“because it’s your name?”

“how did you— my name?”

“yes. bruce wayne.” says ric. “maybe it’s you who needs to go to the hospital, if you’re forgetting who you are. someone should mention it to alfred.”

bruce stares at him, still in the cowl with the lenses glinting in the half-light. “who told you that?” 

“that you’re bruce? c’mon b, i might not be dick fucking grayson anymore, but you told me yourself, after i woke up.” 

“dick… grayson?” 

“in the flesh,” ric says, rubbing at his face once more, like that would relieve the pressure building up behind his eyes. “but not in the mind.”

“that’s not possible,” says bruce and there’s something about him that ric registers as _dangerous,_ makes him unsettled. ric tenses. “who are you really?”

“i’ve already told you.”

“how do you know who i am?”

“because you told me.”

“i didn’t,” says bruce. 

“stop playing games with me, bruce, or i swear—”

“you said you were dick grayson?” bruce interrupts and ric’s fingers twitch with the urge to punch him. 

“ _ric_ ,” he snarls. 

“why.”

ric stares at him, too many feelings swirling through him to name. rage settles at the top, within reach. 

“not that you’ll listen to me, but i thought i made it very clear that i don’t fucking want your opinion. i don’t care how you feel, but i am not your fucking boy wonder anymore. i’m not nightwing, and i never will be. that person is _gone_ , and it’s just me, and just me wants to get out of this fucking business but you all keep _pestering_ me _,_ showing up whenever the hell you feel like it and trying to make me into something i’m not anymore. just fuck the hell off and leave me _alone._ ” ric’s shouting by the end, chest heaving and his heart beating a staccato against his sternum. bruce still looks menacing but he’s got a distinct air of surprise radiating off of him. 

“fuck this,” ric says, after the silence stretches on and on, and he starts for the stairs leading up to the manor, stomping his feet on the metal as he goes. 

bruce calls out behind him but ric doesn’t listen, leaps for the railings and hoists himself up past a flight of stairs, hurries up on quick toes so bruce can’t catch up. bruce is slower than normal, some absent part of ric’s mind notes, but he pushes it away, slips past the clock and makes for the back door. 

there’s a kid sitting by himself at the big wooden table in the kitchen, one hand wrapped around a glass of milk and the other around a stuffed animal. 

ric stops in his tracks. 

the kid in front of him has wide blue eyes and hair that’s far too long, dropping falling onto his face in chunks. ric sucks his lip into his mouth and worries it with his teeth as the boy stares and stares and stares. ric stares back. 

“dad?” the boy says after a moment, hesitant. it doesn’t break the tension, makes it swell instead, a heavy weight on ric’s tongue. “is that… you?” 

ric bites down hard, tasting blood before he lets go. “no. i’m not-- i’m not your dad. he’s downstairs.”

there’s a moment when the kid holds himself completely still, all the energy frozen in anticipation. something wild lights up his face and then, just as quickly, it falls. 

“oh,” he says and ducks his chin. “i thought--” 

“ric?” bruce half-shouts, rounding the corner with long, long strides. he stops in his tracks when he sees them both. “oh. shit. dick.”

“i’m not—” ric starts to snap and then stops, cutting his gaze to the boy sitting at the table. “dick?” he repeats and eyes the kid, looking at the whisp of a child. “ _you’re_ dick?” 

something shifts in the kid’s eyes. “yeah. who are you?” 

“ric,” he says slowly, something whirling in his mind, waiting for the pieces to click. 

“oh.” 

“grayson.” 

“oh,” says dick again. “are we related?” 

“i don’t know,” ric says. “who are you?”

dick looks at him warily. “richard grayson,” he replies and ric’s head is pounding with the possibility he doesn’t want to think about. 

“ric,” bruce warns, low and deadly.

“ _i’m_ richard grayson,” he says, too loud. “me.”

“ric,” bruce says again, making an aborted motion when ric flings his arm out to point at the kid.

“did you clone me? is that what you did?”

dick shrinks in his chair and bruce’s eyes flick briefly over to him. “no.”

“are you training him to be your next piece of cannon fodder and thought it would be a good joke? because it’s not a fucking joke.”

something tightens in bruce’s face, and if ric didn’t know better he’d think it’s fear. “i don’t know what you mean by cannon fodder.”

“sure you don’t,” ric says with an ugly sort of snort, his hand jumping automatically up to touch the scar on his head. 

“i don’t,” says bruce again. “unless you’re upset about something i did to your company?”

“company is a real pretty way to say vi—”

“dick is not a clone, to my knowledge,” bruce interrupts, on the forceful side of polite. “you, on the other hand…”

“nuh uh, i’m verified one hundred percent boy wonder, and none of you will let me forget it.” he turns to dick. “are you a time traveller?”

dick shakes his head, his hair swinging face still pale. out of the corner of his eye, ric catches bruce grimace. 

and suddenly everything falls into place and everything goes to shit. 

“holy shit,” he says and it feels like he’s got no control over his body, none over what comes out of his mouth. “did i time travel?” he doesn’t wait for a reply, just whirls around to bruce, and jabs a finger at the kid. “are we the same fucking person?”

a muscle ticks in bruce’s jaw and he nods after a minute, unsurprised. 

“fucking _capes_ ,” ric grinds out, twisting to jab a finger in bruce’s direction. “i told you i didn’t want any part of it, that i was _out_ , and then shit like this happens and i’m pulled back in again. i don’t want it, i don’t care who the fuck you think i am. put me back, you _bastard_.”

“i don’t know what gives you the idea that i have any more control over this situation than you do,” bruce says, voice as sharp as the thin edge of a knife. 

“because you—”

“you’re me?” a small voice interrupts and both men cut a sharp glance at the table. child-dick’s eyes are wide and his face pale, looking at ric from head to toe. “from the future?”

ric knows he’s a sight. he’s got a face that’s supposed to be pretty— _was_ pretty, once, before— but it’s hardened by the buzzed hair, by the scar marring the side of his head and highly visible. he knows he looks dangerous, unsettling.

“looks like it, kid,” he says roughly and bruce makes a sound in his throat, too vague for ric to interpret. 

“i don’t believe you,” dick answers, sliding off his chair. “i don’t… believe you.” 

he shrugs, running his tongue over the cut on his lip. “it’s the truth.” 

dick looks at bruce, a quick thing out of the corner of his eye. bruce nods, almost imperceptibly, and something shifts in dick’s face. 

“you look like my dad,” he says to the floor near ric’s feet, a curious little wobble in his voice. “my dad when he cut his hair real short because he didn’t want to use shampoo any more.” 

“uh.”

dick looks at him again and ric wonders exactly what had happened in his life-- both of their lives-- to make his gaze that heavy. it couldn’t have come from batman, not so soon. ric’s a little fuzzy on the details but he knows he didn’t become a ward of the waynes until he was eight. this kid barely looks that, thin and wiry and entirely too small. 

“you don’t remember?” dick asks, voice climbing with anxiety. “you don’t remember when that happened?” 

“i don’t remember a lot of things.” 

“how could you forget?” dick’s nearly yelling now, high and terrified. bruce makes an aborted motion behind him, like he’s about to comfort the boy, and then stills again. “his hair was so long and then-- and then he just _cut_ it all off! mama cried, and zitka was scared of him for a while, and so he started growing it out again. how could you _forget_?” 

“i—”

“it’s not me, bruce! he’s an imposter, it’s not me!” 

“dick—”

“i wouldn’t forget, _ever_ ,” dick yells and then he’s off, darting from the room so quickly ric barely registers it, the tattered stuffed animal tucked under his arm. he pushes past alfred in the door, who immediately turns around to follow him. bruce blinks once, twice, and then turns his scowl onto ric. 

“you could’ve handled that better.” 

“sorry, you’re saying that to me, the guy who literally just found out he’s fucking eighteen years in the past? you’re telling me i could’ve handled it better? exactly _how?”_

“not traumatizing an child, for one.”

“tough shit,” ric snaps back. “the kid’s already traumatized beyond belief and he’s going to have to learn to deal with it. he can’t get away from what happens. trust me, i’ve tried, and i’m still here in the fucking past without any of my fucking memories. so yeah, tough fuckin’ shit.” 

they stare at each other for a minute, bruce glaring and ric breathing hard, and for a second, ric registers something familiar. 

“we’ve done this before,” he says uncertainly, taking in everything in the room, the light, the lines in bruce’s face, the silence of the house. “haven’t we?” 

bruce stares at him for a minute. “how would i know?”

“just… a feeling.”

“you’re the one from from the future,” bruce says finally and he’s out of the cowl but ric imagines he can still see its shadow. his voice is forcibly calm. “how far?”

ric runs a hand over his hair, feeling it bristle under his palm, and takes a breath. “uh. i’m twenty six. you?”

something works in bruce’s jaw again. “twenty four.”

“i’m older than you?” ric asks before he can stop himself, the words slipping out of his mouth too quickly to catch. he can’t imagine a bruce that young. “what the hell?”

the muscle ticks harder. “dick is nine.”

“he looks more like he’s six.”

“i’m sure you would know more about your development than i would,” bruce says dryly. ric shakes his head. 

“don’t know a lot of things.”

“you mentioned. amnesia?”

“mmhm,” he mumbles, closing his eyes, tiredness hitting all of sudden like a brick, mixing with the leftover alcohol and constant exhaustion he carries around with him. not to mention the still-present headache at the back of his eyes that is making itself re-known, now that he’s calming down a bit. “can barely remember who i am.”

“for how long?”

“i can’t remember anything in my life.”

“no, i meant, how long have you been like this?”

“oh. the last six months, give or take a few days.”

he feels bruce’s hesitation, the war between wanting to be vulnerable and wanting to understand the situation. “was it because of batman?”

ric opens his eyes. “of course it was because of fucking _batman_. as far as i understand it, most things in my life are because of batman, some good, but most really fucking bad.”

bruce’s face is carefully composed but there’s something weird in his eyes, something almost… guilty? it makes ric uncomfortable, makes his skin feel too tight. he’s not sure why. 

“ah.”

“doesn’t matter, anyway. it’s a whole other life now, in a lot of ways.”

“how did you even get here?”

“here? you mean in the past? not a damn clue.” 

“hn.” 

“can you send me back?” 

“send you back? how?” 

“dunno. you’re batman, you should know how to do it.” 

“i didn’t even know time travel existed until a few minutes ago,” says bruce, heavy on the disdain. “how the fuck am i supposed to do anything with something i didn’t know was possible?” 

“you usually have an answer for everything,” ric says and then yawns so hard his jaw cracks. “shit, guess that means my car didn’t follow me here. i’ll just borrow one of yours.” he stretches his hands over his head and breathes, cracking a few places in his spine. 

“you can’t just _leave_ ,” bruce objects. 

“holding people hostage is against the law,” he says, bending in half to brush his fingers against the floor. it feels good to stretch, like his body is unlocking all the stress of tonight. “not that you have much regard for the law.”

he peeks up to catch the face bruce makes, the one that would look like he swallowed a lemon if he had normal human expressions. instead, his mouth goes a little bit flatter. 

“you’re a liability,” says bruce. “an abnormality.”

“aw, bruce,” says ric as he straightens. “you always say the nicest thing to your kids.” 

bruce physically recoils at that, flinching away like he can‘t stop himself, and ric lets out a coarse laugh, too rough around the edges to be joyful.

“daddy issues?” he asks in a singsong. 

“dick is my ward,” bruce answers. “not my child.”

it’s not… rejection he’s feeling, not exactly. he doesn’t have the memories for that, just a faint sense of something that was once very, very important. still, it hits like a physical blow at the center of his chest, muscle memory in the way his heart contracts at the realization that bruce doesn’t know him anymore. doesn’t want him. 

“i’m aware,” he manages, close enough to normal that bruce doesn’t react to what ric can’t even explain to himself. 

“i can’t let you leave. you could wreak havoc on the timeline, not to mention gotham.”

“give me a car and i’ll stay out of everyone’s way.”

bruce’s mouth flattens again. “no.”

“you know, you’re a hard ass.”

“i’ve been told. you still can’t leave.”

ric throws his hands up in the air. it’s a useless argument, especially as alfred enters the room on the tail end of bruce’s demand. 

“master, ahem, richard is staying with us, i presume?” says alfred. ric winces. 

“just call me ric, a.”

“dick?” bruce interjects, discreet, and alfred gives a small nod. 

“young master richard has been coaxed down from the railing and tucked back into bed. it’s unclear what he had been doing awake at this hour but rest assured he is safely asleep, or well on his way.” 

“nightmare,” ric says absently, digging his hands into his eyes. “he had a nightmare and came down for some milk. s’what i used to do when i was a kid in the circus.” 

there’s a moment of silence, heavy with something ric can’t figure out. he looks at alfred and bruce, are both just watching each other in a silent conversation he can’t understand. 

“bed, i think,” says alfred after the moment passes. “it is late for us all. or early, i should say.”

ric nods and follows alfred down a hallway, blinking against the dark and sleepiness starting to descend. the door barely closes behind him before he’s toppling into the bed, asleep as his head hits the pillow. 

the room he wakes up in is big, unfamiliar in an uncomfortable way, and has the distinct air of being abandoned. alfred would never allow it to be musty, but it definitely feels unlived in, like it’s a room in a museum. ric stares up at the crown molding on the ceiling for a good long while before rolling over the side of the bed. his clothes from last night are gross, grimy and sweaty in a way that almost makes him ashamed, but there’s nothing else for him to wear so he pulls the shirt and pants back on, grimacing when they hit his skin. 

he makes his way through the massive house, right hand on the wall so he won’t get lost. he learned that from… somewhere, to keep himself from getting turned around in a hall of mirrors. right hand on the wall, right turns only, and eventually you’ll get out. it leads him down to the bannister and then to the kitchen, big and gleaming. it’s no less intimidating in the daylight.

alfred is there, consulting a notebook by the counter, and he looks up when ric enters the room. 

“ah. good morning. i trust you slept well?” 

“i did,” ric says nervously, extremely conscious of how shabby he looks in comparison to the rest of the sparkling room. alfred doesn’t seem fazed at all, just sets his notebook down. 

“perhaps something to eat?” 

“uh.” 

“master bruce is not awake yet and therefore will not be eating with us, at least not for another thirty minutes.” 

“i-- sure. i’ll have some cereal?” 

alfred turns to the stove and reaches for the frying pan. “i’ll make you some eggs. it’s better for you.” 

“okay,” says ric, drawing the word out a little. “anyone else joining us?” 

“master richard usually wakens earlier, but i do not think he slept well last night. i wouldn’t be surprised if he rose a bit later than is his normal routine,” alfred informs him, frowning a tiny bit. ric fidgets with the placemat on the table, lining it up with the edge of the wood.

“i didn’t mean to upset him last night.” 

“events happened a bit suddenly.” 

“i thought i was-- i thought i was back in, uh, my gotham.” 

“an understandable assumption.” alfred pauses for a second, looks back at him from the crackling breakfast. “what is it like… in your gotham?” 

ric runs a hand over the stubble of his head, fingers grazing the scar stretching over the side, and thinks. 

“i don’t know a lot,” he admits to alfred’s back and then tips his head back to look at the ceiling. “i lost it all a while ago. everything, just wiped. i have all my muscle memory, i know how to talk and do everything like that, but all the context is gone. i’ve been figuring it out as i go.” 

“oh?” 

“you’re still alive, don’t worry. bruce is too, unfortunately,” he says and grimaces when alfred shoots him a look. he rubs his head again. “um. i think-- uh. i think dick is well loved. everyone gets real sad when i don’t remember something, or real angry. it’s not a pleasant experience.” 

“everyone?” 

“the rest of the family, i mean. i-- i mean, dick-- is the first but bruce just… kept taking in kids, i guess. his little army, all ready to protect gotham,” ric finishes sourly, and there’s a moment when all that’s heard is the sizzle of oil. 

“how many children?” 

ric snorts. “do you mean like legally, emotionally, or biologically? cause all of those are different answers.” 

“oh my. all, i suppose.” 

“seven, i think. it’s hard to tell when i don’t remember them all, but seven i think.”

“goodness,” alfred says, only a little faint. “that many?” 

“bruce doesn’t do anything half-assed.” 

“hmm.” alfred lifts the eggs off the pan and onto a plate, sliding it in front of ric at the table. “and are they all aware?” 

“aware of what?”

he frowns, folding his arms across his chest. “master bruce’s nightly duties.” 

“you mean batman? hell yeah they know. shit, they’re all involved in some way or another with their fucking idiotic spandex constumes and stupid names. they’re at his beck and call for this godawful city, and the universe too when the aliens decide to fuck shit up. they’re all just as deep as he is.” 

ric realises he’s said too much only after he’s stopped, shut his mouth with a light dusting of shame across his neck. he peers at alfred and finds alfred’s mouth is in a straight line, his eyes hard and distant. 

“i had hoped,” he starts slowly, “that this would be something that master bruce would grow out of.” 

“not a chance,” says ric. “not a fucking chance. he gets worse.” 

“hmm.” 

“hmm indeed,” he echoes and sticks a forkful of eggs into his mouth. they’re perfect. alfred turns back to the stove and fiddles with it, out of ric’s sight, and lets the silence sit in the room, slightly uncomfortable. it lasts until there’s a thump. alfred half-turns, staring intently at the entrance to the kitchen, and then cuts his gaze towards ric. 

“you should know,” he tells him urgently, quietly, “that master richard has no concept of what happens, ahem, downstairs, and we are determined to keep it that way.” 

ric blinks, processing what’s been said. it explains a lot, namely the way bruce had talked around the boy last night. it doesn’t sit right in his body. 

“he’s going to find out eventually.”

alfred’s lips thin out more. “yes, but it should not come from you.” 

“yeah, okay,” ric agrees, reluctant, and alfred dips his chin in a quick nod, focusing back on the doorway. a second later, dick slinks into the room, just as little, just as wary. he’s got the stuffed elephant tucked back under his arm, ragged and soft, that jostles something at the corners of ric’s memory. 

“zitka,” he says without thinking and dick looks at him sharply, anger in the set of his mouth. 

“she’s mine,” he says and hugs her tighter to his chest. “not yours.” 

“i know, i just-- is her name zitka?” 

“yes,” dick answers slowly. “after the elephant at haly’s.” 

“the circus.” 

“mhm.” dick sits himself at the table, across from ric and down a ways, and eyes him like he would eye a restless tiger. “did you read about it in the paper?” 

ric blinks. “the paper?” 

“about the--” dick’s breath catches here, just a tiny bit. “about the accident.” 

“why would i have read about it in the paper?” 

dick’s scowl is back, angry and guarded and distrustful. “you ask dumb questions, you know that?” 

“it happened so long ago and tim said i was _there_ , so why would i have read it?” 

“is tim your guy?” 

“my guy?” 

“the one who set you up to this,” explains dick as alfred sets a full plate in front of him. he gives a quick smile in thanks and then goes back to interrogation mode, fingers wrapped tightly around his butter knife. 

“no one set me up to this, dick. I don’t even want to be here.” 

dick hums noncommittally and spears a potato with the end of his knife. “likely story.” 

“you don’t have to believe i’m you--” 

“i don’t.” 

“--but i promise i’m not fucking with you. this shit is the worst, okay, and as much as my life is shitty in the future, i’d rather be there than here where it’s _weird._ ” 

“alfred doesn’t like swearing,” he says mildly around a mouthful. “he always makes me do dishes when i do it.” 

“master richard is an adult,” alfred interjects, “so he is not required to do dishes for that infraction. however, i would request he refrains from doing so in current company.” 

“sure, boss,” says ric. dick looks thoughtful but his eyes are keen, focused on ric. 

“s’okay, alfred, i’ve heard a lot worse. mama said our strongman had a mouth like a sailor. do you remember what his name is?” 

the last question he shoots at ric with no warning, just a rapid staccato of words that takes ric a minute to take in. 

“uh… no. i don’t.” 

dick makes a face. “don’t see how you can be me when you don’t know anything about my life.” 

“because i lost my--” 

“he is you,” bruce interrupts, sweeping into the room and talking over ric. his presence is such a physical thing, a dark smudge against the surroundings that draws the eye in, even in his pressed light shirt and slacks. he pours himself a cup of coffee from the machine on the counter and sits at the head of the table where there’s already a newspaper laid out. “the dna matches.” 

“surprise, surprise,” ric mutters. dick’s forehead knits together. 

“dna? how did you test that so fast?” 

one corner of bruce’s mouth twitches, the only hit of surprise he allows himself but ric still catches it. 

“i had them do a rush order.” 

“at three in the morning? that’s pretty late.” 

“i’m rich,” bruce says bluntly, shaking out the paper. “they’ll do anything for me, at any time. the dna matches.” 

“told ya, kid,” ric says, dropping his cutlery onto the table and sitting back in his seat. dick hauls zitka closer, his frown deepening. 

“they can’t match,” he says, too loud. “he can’t be me, bruce. he _can’t._ ” 

“can’t argue with science like that.” 

“he can’t be me,” dick repeats, thin and desperate and near a yell. “he can’t! he forgot everything! that can’t happen to me, i can’t forget-- zitka and mama and tati and-- i can’t forget. i _won’t_.” 

he’s breathing heavily when he finishes, chest heaving and face pale. ric feels sorry for the kid, a flash of angst going through him as he realises what the kid is going through, imagines what it would be like to be in his shoes. bruce must be doing the same thing because he lowers his paper to look at dick full on, perfectly still as he processes. 

dick’s chest heaves again, a deep flush starting on his cheeks. he looks fragile and embarrassed, uncertain. “he can’t be me,” he says once more and it’s shaky with tears. bruce twitches in his seat, embarrassment curling around the corners of his expression too, and opens his mouth.

“i—” he starts and stops, looking at a loss. 

dick’s blush goes deeper and he drops his gaze to look at his plate, shrinking more into his seat. “sorry,” he mumbles. “i didn’t mean to be rude.”

“dick,” bruce starts again and hesitates again, clearly unsure of how to handle this whole situation. ric digs his teeth into his lip, reopening the cut from before, and tastes metal.

“i apologize,” dick says woodenly. “it won’t happen again.” and then. he slips from his seat and darts out of the room, quick as a wink, before anyone can react.

ric swings his head around to cock an eyebrow at bruce. “wonderfully handled.”

“shut up,” bruce snaps, his knuckles tight around his fork handle. “this is your fault.”

“sure. but i’m not his guardian.”

bruce gives him a glare that’s one notch down from his batman glower. ric refuses to be intimidated. 

“what are you expecting me to do?” he says and it’s near a whine, a young sound out of a young adult. 

“uh,” says ric with a blink, forcefully reminded of their argument last night. “not that.”

bruce’s scowl gets deeper. “very helpful.”

“i’m not here to be helpful.”

“no, you’re here to sit and judge me, a person you don’t even like, and fuck up my ward.”

ric sticks a forkful of eggs in his mouth and chews for a second. “ _you_ kidnapped _me_ , remember?”

“semantics. besides, you were a danger to yourself and the community. if i had known you were going to make dick upset, i would’ve left you there.”

“great hospitality you have,” he mutters, stabbing another clump of food. “very welcoming.”

“you’re not the world’s most perfect guest yourself.”

“i’ll take that compliment.”

“hn.”

something’s restless in ric, like he’s been sitting still too long, an ache in his muscles that demands to be seen to. 

“i ran away,” he says after a moment, the words hot on his tongue. “which is rich to say because i’m a full grown adult, not a child, but they brought me back to the manor to recover and i took off as soon as i could. too many ghosts here.”

bruce raises an eyebrow. “and?”

ric’s mouth twists. “i’ve never been the greatest houseguest.”

“hn,” he says again. “your younger counterpart begs to differ. unlike you, he’s polite and quiet.”

that catches ric’s attention, catching on the edges of his brain, the sense that something’s wrong. “what? quiet?”

“i think he’s said more to you in the past twelve hours than to me in all the time he’s been here,” says bruce with a carefully blank expression. “maybe he talks to alfred, but not to me.”

“quiet,” ric repeats, tracing his tongue over the shape of his teeth and thinking. it’s hard, this. he doesn’t have any memories, doesn’t really even have any stories of himself as a child, just a vague suspicion. 

tim had called him quiet once, with the same careful sort of intonation that bruce had just used, would-be sad and would-be wistful. “you’re too quiet,” he had said.

“is that a bad thing,” ric had answered, still mostly high on painkillers and angry, angry at anything remotely bat shaped. 

“for you, yes.”

“he doesn’t talk to you,” he says slowly, here in the present, fitting his mouth carefully around each word. “because he doesn’t trust you?”

bruce stiffens imperceptibly. “the boy is newly arrived, still. we have not built a rapport.”

it sounds like an answer out of a book, and ric wouldn’t be surprised if it was. bruce seems like the type of person to read obsessively about childhood trauma, his or someone else’s. 

“the kid needs help.”

“we’re aware. we’re working on it.”

“work faster,” ric tells him. 

“you are in no position—”

“that’s my childhood you’re fucking up. plus, i’m older so you have to listen to me,” he says, smirking when bruce’s fingers tighten on the handle of his fork. 

“technically,” bruce grinds out. “but i can still ground you in the future.”

“i’d like to see you try.” he tears apart the last piece of toast with his fingers, getting butter on the tips. “don’t you have a bullshit job to get to?”

bruce glances at the clock on the wall, does a double take, and swears under his breath. “i… have a meeting.”

“don’t make any receptionists cry today.”

ric gets leveled with a glare. “i would never. the receptionists are _nice.”_

ric shrugs. “so am i.”

“hn,” is the only answer, distinctively unimpressed, as bruce leaves the room in a swirl of pressed shirts and a grumpy facade. ric twists a smile in the general direction of the door until all is settled and then dumps his plate in the sink to go exploring. 

the house is big and bustling at this hour and ric winds his way through, avoiding the various maids under alfred’s direction, his right hand idly dragging over the wallpaper. no matter where he goes in the house, he can’t shake the feeling that there are eyes watching his every move, that bruce is just three steps behind and judging whatever he does. it makes him itch. 

somewhere in the bowels of the east wing, his fingers skip over an empty space, a door ajar, and he pauses. someone’s in that room, he can tell. he’s not sure how he can tell, but he can. he taps on the wall for a second, thinking, and then shoulders the door the rest of the way open. 

it’s some sort of unused pantry or closet, deep enough to walk in and stacked high with shelves. there’s a lightbulb up on the ceiling, unilluminated, and a leg hanging down the top shelf. 

“what are you doing here?” dick asks grumpily, sticking his head over the side. “what do you want?”

“i was just… walking,” ric says, offering up his right hand for some reason. dick’s eyes narrow. “do you… sleep here?”

“no,” says dick and ric’s eyes slide to the nest of blankets and pillows surrounding him. “they don’t know about this place.”

ric highly doubts that; alfred knows about everything that goes on in the house and bruce does too, but ric doesn’t argue. 

“okay,” he just says. 

“i like it here.”

“i can see that.”

dick scowls in his direction for a second, chewing on his lip like he’s trying to make up his mind. “it reminds me of home,” he admits furiously. “the caravan.”

and now that he’s said that, ric can see how it would be so. the room is boxy and dark, the shelves deep enough for a boy like dick to be comfortable, and close quarters. 

“‘cept i wasn’t allowed to have the top,” dick mumbles, more to himself than to anyone else. “my bed slid under mama’s.” his face spasms for a second and he slides back so his back is against the wall. all ric can see of him are the tips of his toes. 

“where’d you get the blankets?”

“nicked them from different rooms.”

“gotcha,” says ric and starts to climb up. the shelves are made of good wood, solid, and he tests every step to make sure it will hold his weight, landing at the top. it’s just tall enough for him to sit with the top of his head flush against the ceiling. dick glares at him from across the way. 

“what are you doing?”

“got tired of talking to your feet,” he explains. “got another pillow?”

begrudgingly, dick extracts one from his nest and hands it over for ric to put at the small of his back. 

“it’s actually nice up here.”

“course it is,” says dick. he’s got zitka sat beside him, perched on her own little pillow. “what’s the point of it if it’s not nice?”

“the point of what?”

“dunno. life, i guess.”

ric snorts, an edge to the sound, and dick eyes him again. “you got me there, kid.”

“tati used to say the point of life is to love and have friends. he said you can be the richest man in the world and still be poor because you don’t have anyone to love.”

“did he now?”

“yeah,” dick says and chews on his lip again. “i don’t think bruce is very happy.”

“you don’t?” ric asks around a yawn, one that dick echoes a half second later. 

“yeah. he doesn’t have any friends, just alfred.”

“and you,” ric points out and dick’s face goes sour, dropping one foot to hang over the side of the shelf again so he can kick it in the air. 

“bruce isn’t my friend,” he says savagely. “he’s my _guardian_. it’s not the same thing.”

“oh.”

“i have lots of friends. lots ‘n lots ‘n lots. but they’re all at haly’s and i’m here in stupid gotham in this stupid too big house with no one but zitka.” he sniffs once and scowls deeper, screwing up his face. “it’s _dumb._ i hate it here.”

“living in the mansion must be _so_ difficult,” comments ric, dry, and dick snaps his glare over to him.

“don’t talk to me about _difficult_ ,” dick tells him, nearly yelling. “i’d go back to live in the circus in a _second_ if they’d let me. if you were me, you’d know that.”

“whoa, kid,” ric says and puts his hands up in a placating gesture. “i was being sarcastic. i don’t want to live here, in this time or my own.”

“you don’t?”

“hell no. i live in my car. s’better.”

there’s a second of silence as dick thinks about this and nods, his hair flopping down into his eyes. “i can understand that.”

ric grunts, shifting his weight. “thanks. and, uh, sorry i upset you. earlier.”

“y’r forgiven,” dick says after a minute and it’s only a little bit begrudging. “i still don’t believe you.”

“that’s understandable.”

they fall silent as footsteps echo down the hallway, eyes locked on the door to see if they are discovered and interrupted. they fade quickly, a maid perhaps, on her way from one room to the other. dick makes a face. 

“mama wouldn’t be happy if she knew i didn’t do my own cleaning,” he says, quiet. “she was always telling me to pick up after myself.”

ric understands on some level why bruce employs the maids and the gardeners and god knows who else to do the cleaning. the manor is far too big for alfred to do alone, even if it was all he did, and he is needed elsewhere. still, it sits uncomfortably on his skin too, the wealthiness of it all. 

dick peers at ric through the dimness of the closet. ric stares back, eyes tracing every part of his younger self. he’s skinny, looking like he should be six instead of nine, and his eyes are too big for his face, curious and guarded all in one. his legs are bruised, probably from doing gymnastics without a mat, and his fingers don’t ever seem to stop moving, fluttering here and there noiselessly. there’s a restless sort of nervous energy about him. 

“are you afraid of me?” ric asks. “because i can leave.”

“i’m not _not_ scared of you,” dick answers, careful. his eyes somehow get even wider. “i don’t… i don’t want to live through what happened to you. i don’t want to forget _anything_.”

“aw, kid. it’s not so bad,” ric lies. dick twitches violently. 

“how can you _say_ that? how can you be okay with forgetting everything? i would die.”

“i don’t know any better. i don’t remember what i forgot, or even that there is something to forget. i’m just me.”

“that’s sad.”

“nah. no history, no legacy, nothing. no one to live up to. i can do what i want.”

dick taps his fingers against his knee. “legacy?”

“need to know. boss’s orders.”

“the boss?”

ric jerks his head towards the door. “bruce.”

“if you’ve forgotten everything, how come you know so much?” dick asks and he sounds so much like the child he is that it makes something in ric twinge. 

“the family, they like to talk.”

“the _family_ ,” he says incredulously. “what family?”

“this family,” ric says, waving a hand. “or the one that’s coming. no one can shut up ever.”

dick tips his head to the side, looks at him, looks at the door, looks back at him. “bruce? are we talking about bruce?”

“bruce won’t shut up in his own way,” ric mutters darkly. “won’t stop lecturing, as if that would change anything. it won’t. the rest fill in the gaps.”

“the rest? alfred?”

ric cuts a glance dick’s way. “don’t know if i should be telling you this, kid. don’t know what it would do to you, or the timeline.”

“i’m gonna know it eventually.”

“theoretically.”

“what’s _that_ mean?”

“i mean that timelines are tricky. could be an alternate universe, could be a memory wipe, could change the future if i’m not careful.”

“no, i mean what’s that word? theoretically?”

there’s a lilt to his voice, an accent that ric hadn’t noticed until just now. his _th-_ es aren’t quite sharp enough, his vowels a tiny bit too tall. 

“wait, is english not our first language?” dick looks at him for a minute and shakes his head.”then what is?”

“dunno,” he says with a shrug. “whatever comes to mind first. they spoke a lot of languages at the circus. mama spoke bulgarian when she was angry or excited and da speaks— _spoke—_ french. i like those best, or maybe rita’s italian.”

“huh.”

“haly spoke in english. s’how i know it so good.” dick looks hopeful as he says all this, like he thinks it’ll jog some of ric’s memories. a pang of sympathy goes through ric. 

“sorry, kid,” he says, gentle. dick screws his face up, folds himself closer together. “theoretically means _in theory_. like it hasn’t happened yet but it could.”

dick nods again, repeats the word again, slowly like he’s testing it against his teeth. he flattens the sound out until it sounds like ric’s wide intonation, no hint of other languages coloring the sound. 

ric wonders when he lost any trace of his accent, if it happened bit by bit or all at once, by itself or weaned out of him. 

“theoretically,” dick says again, slowly, “my room is too big.”

ric blinks. “what?”

“my room. it’s too big. i’ve never had so much space before and it makes me itchy.” he tugs on his sleeves. “i don’t like it.”

“you do sleep in here,” ric realises, taking in the blankets and pillows again. “don’t you?”

dick fidgets, not meeting him in the eye. “yeah. found it my second week. i keep waiting for someone to find me but they never have yet.”

“surely bruce knows. he’s _bruce_. or alfred, at least.”

“what does _that_ mean? bruce doesn’t know anything,” he says, cutting a glance up. 

“oh, boy,” ric says around a humorless chuckle. “bruce knows a lot more than you think. if you’re in here, he knows about it, i promise. what do you do about the nightmares?”

dick stiffens. “i don’t get nightmares.”

“bullshit,” he fires back. “course you do.”

“don’t.”

“you have to. your parents just died in front of you, that’s got to make you fu—messed up in some way.”

dick wrinkles his nose, plucking at the blanket next to him. “it’s far enough that they don’t hear. the nightmares, i mean.”

“what?”

“or at least, i _think_ so. no one’s come to check on me after one, so i figure they can’t hear. when they’re really bad, i get some milk.”

there are so many questions on the tip of ric’s tongue, questions about how why and how and why again, but mostly about how dick keeps it all a secret with the two omnipresent men living in the same house. ric doesn’t know much, doesn’t remember anything, but even he knows that there’s no use keeping a secret from the bat, and even less from alfred. he’s not stupid enough to think that bruce hasn’t been keeping tabs on him in bludhaven, no matter how many times he screamed for privacy from virtual strangers. 

but something about dick looks fragile, pressed so thin he’s almost transparent, so ric stops the questions from falling from his mouth, for the time being. instead, he points his toes and lets himself fall carefully from the shelf, landing with a quiet thump on the ground below. 

“where are you going?” dick asks, poking his head over the side to gawk at him.

“i’ve got a whole other wing of the mansion to explore and i can’t do that if i’m sitting in here talking to you, can i, kid?”

dick chews on his lip for a moment and then nods. “no one but alfred n’bruce are allowed in bruce’s office. it’s _off limits_.” he enunciates the words carefully, like they’ve been drilled into his head. “and alfred keeps the best snacks above the refrigerator.”

and well, some distant part of ric must remember that because it rings true, like an honest truth. ric inclines his head as dick waves goodbye, and slips out the door, leaving it a half inch open behind him. 

“you’re not supposed to be in here,” bruce says. ric barely suppresses his flinch. 

“dick mentioned.”

“then why are you here?”

“i’m just looking,” he replies as bruce moves further into the study, carefully shutting the door behind him. careful, ric’s sure, of tiny eyes catching sight of something they shouldn’t. 

bruce moves strangely. he’s not a teenager and doesn’t move like one, but there’s something younger in the way he sways as he walks, something more spry. he figures it’s the lack of a few decades of trauma done to his body, a few hundred thousand aches lifted from his bones. 

“this room is off limits.”

“i’m not really one to follow the limits,” ric says thoughtfully, closing the drawer of the desk. “not how i was raised.”

“hn. you weren’t at dinner.”

“nope,” he says, popping the p. “i wasn’t.”

he’d avoided the populated parts of the manor, moving around the staff and family alike. being alone felt normal, felt-- not _good,_ necessarily, but real. expected. 

bruce’s face contorts the tiniest bit. “you.. were missed.” 

ric picks up a paperweight on the desk and idly throws it up in the air, snatching it back before it dents the broad oak surface. “heard that one before.” 

“hn,” bruce says again. 

“you had a face like you’d eaten a lemon then too.” 

bruce glowers. “what are you doing?” 

“being nosy,” ric answers, tossing the paperweight again. he adds a stapler and starts to juggle, the motions as natural to him as breathing. bruce watches the items cycle and flicks his gaze back to ric’s face. 

“what are you looking for?” 

“oh, i don’t know. any sign of anything that could help me. your magician friend’s phone number. could just yell for superman but i don’t know if he’d answer. or get past the defense on the roof.” 

“superman?”

“yeah, cl—” ric stops and gives bruce an evaluating glance, snatching the stapler before it drops to his left. “do you not know who superman is?”

“no,” bruce says tersely. 

“huh. well, not going to ruin that surprise.”

there’s a pause. “what defense on the roof?” 

“christ, b,” ric says with a sigh, flicking his wrist. “do you know anything?”

“look who’s talking.”

he snorts and catches the flying items, sets them nicely on the desk where they were before. bruce relaxes minutely. 

“was the paperweight expensive?” 

“it might have been,” bruce allows. 

“gross,” says ric. “are you headed out to patrol?” 

bruce glances over his shoulder instinctively, checking that the door’s shut. “not yet. not until later.” 

“aha.” 

“dick’s bedtime is eight thirty. i don’t leave until nine, usually.” 

“you tuck him into bed? cute,” ric says and there’s a sarcastic edge to it. bruce shifts his gaze the tiniest bit to the spot by ric’s ear. 

“ah, no.” 

“no?” 

“i do not.” 

“bruce, he’s a child. do you just leave him?” 

almost imperceptibly, he shifts his weight and determinedly does not look away from the wall behind ric. “alfred is more than capable of childcare.” 

“and look how we both turned out,” ric answers snidely and bruce’s eyes snap back to ric’s, fierce. 

“don’t speak about alfred like that,” he says, voice low, and ric raises his arms innocently.

“i was just commenting.” 

“i, uh. i am not good with children. alfred is much better at putting him to sleep.” 

ric thinks about the closet he had sat in earlier, with its nest of blankets and pillows and nods. “uh huh.” 

“i do whatever needs to be done here unless i am needed.” 

“oh, i see. you sit here and mess around so you don’t have to be a hands-on parent.” bruce opens his mouth to interject but ric corrects himself, a hand held up to stop him. “guardian, exc- _use_ me.” 

“for someone with no memory, you have quite a lot of judgement.”

“it’s my childhood you’re messing with.”

“so you’ve said.”

“and i’ll say it again.”

bruce scowls, looking a half-second close to growling out something argumentative. ric bites his tongue instead of baiting him and reaches for the pens laid out neatly, twirls one through his fingers like a miniature baton. 

“are you always this restless?” bruce grinds out, but he seems to be relaxing.

“yep.”

“that pen is also expensive,” he says and ric cocks an eyebrow. his arm shoots out so he can grab another pen to twirl on his other hand. there’s a complicated finger wriggle and the pens twist through the air before coming down on ric’s palm. “you’re good at that.” 

“muscle memory,” ric says. “like you said, i get restless.” 

“you still have your instincts?” 

“well, yeah. isn’t that the point of muscle memory? it doesn’t go away with amnesia?” 

“this whole situation is new to me,” says bruce. “forgive me if i don’t assume.” 

“i don’t think i’m as sharp as i used to be but yes, i do have some of my skillset, but i can’t remember any of it.” 

bruce’s eyes flash in the light draining from the room and something ominous fills the air. “what skillset?” 

“c’mon, bruce. do you think i could make it out of this manor without picking up a few things--hey!” ric cuts himself off as bruce’s fist comes flying at his stomach, necessitating a quick step to the side. without thinking, ric jumps onto the desk and twists in a somersault off the other side, landing behind bruce. “what the hell?” 

“i wanted to see what your instincts were.” 

ric breathes heavy for a moment, his hand reaching up to push hair that’s no longer there out of his face.

“so you fuckin’ decked me?” 

“i would’ve pulled the punch before it got to you,” bruce responds, his tone almost sulky. it’s a strange cadence on batman with the brucie wayne persona stripped away. “you were trained well.” 

“well, yeah. i don’t think you or the villains were easy on me. there are some things i’m glad i don’t remember.” bruce’s face is a blank mask, smooth and emotionless so ric can’t guess at what he’s feeling. it’s fine, ric doesn’t particularly care to know. he sighs, a sharp exhale of air in the quiet study. 

“this sucks ass,” ric says and half of him wants to turn into a handstand, turn the world upside down to see if it makes more sense that way. “each and every interaction i’ve had with you is shittier than the last.”

“i’m not exactly having fun here either.”

“don’t say that when i know you love punching people’s faces in more than you love most things,” he tells bruce nastily and watches his face shutter. “now that the physical altercation part of the evening is finished, i’m going to bed. unless you’d like to punch me again?” 

“not tonight. i apologize for attacking you,” says bruce, not the least bit ashamed. 

ric snorts, shaking his head. “apology not accepted. enjoy your brooding in a bat costume,” he says as he presses past bruce. the door swings shut on his annoyed face, moving on oiled hinges so it doesn’t squeak as it closes. 

ric doesn’t hear batman go on patrol, even if he is awake still when bruce leaves. he’s still awake hours later when there’s some shuffling by his room— quiet enough that it might’ve gone unnoticed, if not for ric’s keen ears, pricked by habit. he creeps from his perch and pokes his head out into the corridor, catches the tail end of a blanket disappear around the corner. dick, then, off to his own bed. 

unbothered, ric goes back to the window with the book he had taken from the library earlier that day. he’s not one to read, but his phone had been in his car and probably wouldn’t work in the past anyway; he sits with his legs dangling out the window and reads the first story that had seemed interesting. it’s raining gently outside and it’s a nice thing, a calming sound. 

his body’s wired for night, has been since he woke up with amnesia, and he can’t sleep until the dawn’s lighting up the horizon. in bludhaven, he’s been wandering the pubs all night, either drinking them dry or picking up people to take home for some cash. it’s easier in the night, somehow. safer. he can hide in the shadows if he wants to and doesn’t have to perform for a world he doesn’t quite fit into just right. being by himself, being _lonely_ , feels right on his skin, sitting on him like a well-worn jacket. 

eventually, the room gets a little too claustrophobic, the view a little too stale, and ric abandons his book to go roaming the hallways yet again. bruce won’t be back for a few hours yet and dick is sleeping, so ric can walk without worrying about being intercepted by someone. the corridors look different by night, shadowy and deep, and he has a feeling he could get lost so easily in this place. 

he rounds a corner and stops just before smacking into someone half his height. 

“ric,” says dick, rearing back a few steps. he’s got a blanket wrapped around his body, tied under his chin like a cape. something about it makes ric’s stomach twist uncomfortably. “what are you doing awake?” 

“couldn’t sleep,” ric says carefully. “you?” 

dick studies his feet. “yeah, same.” 

“nightmares again?” 

“uh huh. wanted something to drink.” 

ric nods, that discomfort still in his body. there’s something wrong but he can’t quite put his finger on it. “do you, uh. want to talk about it?” he asks carefully. dick looks up at him through his hair and then swipes it away with his fingers, impatient. it looks wet in the half-shadows of the hallway. 

“about what?”

“the nightmare.”

he freezes for a second and then shakes his head wildly. “no, i really don’t.”

“okay,” says ric. “that’s… okay.”

“really?” dick asks, voice flat.

“sure, kid. i don’t want to talk about mine, either.”

“you still get nightmares?” 

“all the time. comes with the territory.” 

“territory?” 

ric waves a hand vaguely towards his head and dick nods, his eyes flicking to the scar scraping across ric’s scalp. he looks about to say something but he yawns first, a huge, jaw-cracking thing that seems to startle himself. ric smiles. 

“go back to bed, kid. you look exhausted.” 

“m’not,” dick mumbles but he’s rubbing at his eyes and blinking owlishly. 

“go lay down, at least.” 

“okay, but i won’t fall asleep,” he says grumpily, fisting a hand in his blanket and pulling it up from the ground so he won’t trip. 

“sure you won’t,” ric says with a chuckle. without thinking, he presses the palm of his hand to dick’s head before he goes by, like a ward against the nightmares that sniff at his door. dick freezes for a heartbeat and then leans into the touch. “sleep well, dick.” 

“thanks,” dick says with another yawn and winds an arm around ric’s waist or a quick hug. it’s so brief that ric can’t even begin to figure out a response, just a squeeze and then dick’s shuffling down the hallway, his hair a mess and the blanket dragging behind him, his shadow long against the wall. 

in the morning, ric walks into an argument at breakfast, caught unawares.

“—can’t possibly be serious, alfred!”

“master bruce, when it comes to this, i am always serious.”

“with everything that’s going on, you think it’s appropriate to host a gala tonight? here?” says bruce incredulously. alfred gives him a look. 

“i think it would be far more suspicious if we cancelled the annual fundraising gala on the morning of the gala, don’t you? it’s an _institution_.” 

“it’s a damn party where everyone gets too drunk and spends too much money,” bruce grumbles. 

“which then funds organisations across the city. it’s something your parents believed in and it’s something you must continue to do in their honor, particularly if you’re committed to the playboy image you so seem to cultivate,” alfred shoots back, mild enough to almost be inoffensive at first hearing. bruce’s scowl gets deeper. 

“but batman--” 

“batman can wait one night,” alfred says. “or he can wait until later in the evening.” 

“shit, alfred.” 

“i had your suit cleaned and pressed. it’s hanging in your closet.” 

bruce lets out a sigh and ric snickers, coming in to sit at the table. 

“sorry, am i interrupting?” 

“yes,” bruce says tersely and alfred turns back to the coffee pot. ric shrugs. 

“a gala sounds fun.”

bruce levels a look at him. “you aren’t invited.”

“aw, c’mon! who’s gonna watch the kid while you’re shmoozing with the other rich people? i’ll be helpful.”

“shit,” bruce mutters, shutting his eyes. “dick.”

“master richard and i went on a shopping expedition a few days ago,” alfred says calmly, his back still to them. “he has the proper attire in his closet, and a few choices of ties, even.”

“thank god.”

“no need to thank a deity for my foresight. guests arrive at seven, party staff is here all day, and i’m sure we can find something suitable for master ric before you’re all to make an appearance.”

“has anyone told you that you’re a force of nature, alfred?” ric asks and alfred turns his head enough so ric can see his smile. 

“years of practice, rather.”

“i can’t believe you’re making us do this,” says bruce. “it’s ridiculous and dangerous. what if ric says something to a guest that alters the entire timeline?”

“then we shall deal with those altered timelines as they come.”

bruce sighs again. he’s slouched in his chair and ric has to blink to remind himself that it’s _bruce,_ the formidable shadow that is the bane of criminals universes over. here, like this, he just seems like a teenager told he’s just been grounded. 

“this is a terrible idea,” he complains. alfred sets a plate of toast on the table, buttered to perfection. ric picks one up with the tips of his fingers and takes a bite out of the corner. 

“do you have an alternative?”

“i could fake a sickness.”

“your father hosted this gala when he had mono, once,” alfred replies. “regardless, the show must go on.”

“i don’t like this,” says bruce. ric makes a face. 

“do you like anything?” 

“hn.” 

“proved my point,” ric says through the bread and butter. “a gala, huh?” 

“a way for the rich to flaunt their wealth over canapes and champagne,” bruce says, picking up his own piece of toast. “it’s all for the tax deductions, anyway.” 

“depressing.” 

“you are under no obligation to attend,” he tells ric, not looking at him at him as he scrapes a fine layer of jam on his bread. “if you would prefer staying out of sight, you are free to do so.” 

“uh huh,” ric replies around a yawn. 

“it would be better, in fact, if you did not attend.” 

ric leans back in his chair, crossing one ankle over his knee and shrugging. “see the thing is, i really love canapes.” 

bruce’s fingers tighten on his knife. “you’re an anomaly. you could put us all in danger.” 

“i’ve already done that just by coming here, bruce. one night shmoozing and keeping an eye on dick is not going to upset the time-space continuum anymore than it already has.” 

“you don’t know that. it might.” 

“alright,” says ric. “but what are you going to do about it?” 

bruce blinks. “what?” 

“how are you going to stop me from not attending? you can’t just lock me in my room like i’m ten, and you can’t just forbid me from going, for a lot of reasons but number one being that i’m older than you are.” 

“don’t remind me,” bruce grits out, his knuckles still white. 

“so what will you do about it?” 

bruce grumbles again and pointedly does not answer. instead, he shoves half the toast into his mouth in a single bite, refusing to look in ric’s direction even a little. ric’s smirk returns and he leans farther back in his chair, smug. 

“but why?” 

“like i said,” ric says, “i really love canapes.” 

“you’re an asshole,” bruce says and it makes ric laugh, sharpish. 

“from what i’ve been told, i learned from the best.” 

“fuck you.” 

“right back at you, b,” ric says just as dick appears in the doorway, his hair stuck up in the back and zitka still under his arm. 

“‘morning,” he says quietly. bruce nods back and dick takes the chair in the middle of the table, sneaking his hand out to nab some toast. he’s quiet, tired mixed with sadness, and ric frowns. 

“dick, i have some bad news,” bruce says, far too formal and far too awkward. dick stiffens mid-chew, sending one panicked look ric’s way, but bruce keeps talking. “unfortunately, there’s a gala on tonight and you have to be there.” 

“i-- _what?_ ”

“a gala. i believe alfred bought you appropriate clothing a while ago, so you’ll wear that. be down dressed at seven.” 

dick sends another panicked look at ric, his head swinging between the two of them like there’s a tennis match going on. “i don’t understand,” he says, his voice high and thready. bruce’s eyebrow twitches down. 

“which part?” 

“i don’t-- a gala?” 

“it’s a fancy party,” ric cuts in, remembering their conversation in the closet yesterday. “for rich people. bruce wants you to go.” 

“but why?” 

bruce’s frown gets deeper. “why not? you don’t have to attend if you don’t want to, of course, but it’s happening here and you’ll have to stay in your room otherwise.” 

dick shrugs, sliding down in his chair so they can really only see his eyes over the top of the table. they’re big and worried. “do you want me to do tricks?” 

“uh, tricks?” 

“yeah. m’not as good as-- as my parents, but i can do some. i’m good at walking on my hands.” 

“why would i want you to do tricks?” 

dick’s eyebrows bunch together. “why else would you want me at the party?” 

bruce stares for a long, long moment and ric can practically see the gears whirring in his head, trying to parse out exactly what dick is trying to say, and getting nowhere fast. ric sighs. 

“he wants you to go as a guest, dick. not as entertainment. well, a host. but definitely not as the performing act.” 

dick cuts a quick look at bruce. “why?” 

“i’m hosting the party,” bruce answers. “it would look odd if you were not there. or if you were… doing tricks.” 

on his left side, ric winces. “it’s a fun thing, kid,” he says, as gently as he can manage. “not a work thing. you’ll eat a bunch of tiny sandwiches and charm the pants off of a bunch of rich old ladies and it’ll be fun.” 

“it is a work thing,” bruce protests, nudging his plate back from the edge of the table. “i am required to be there.” 

“and you want me there so it doesn’t look weird,” dick says slowly and sinks down more in his chair. “do i wear my leotard?” 

bruce snorts, shaking his head. “the tuxedo you procured the other day should be just fine.” 

“the black suit? with the tie?” 

“that very one, assuming it’s appropriate. alfred bought it, though, so i assume it is. as i said before, be dressed and ready by seven. now, if you’ll excuse me, i have to go prepare for the influx of people arriving in a few hours.” 

dick watches him stalk out, waiting until he’s left the room completely before looking back at ric. 

“a gala?” 

“yeah, kid.” 

“and i’m not supposed to do tricks.” 

“nope,” says ric. “just tricking everyone into thinking you’re charming.” 

dick nods to himself. “i can do that. best behavior.”

“you’ll do fine, i promise. it’s just a bunch of ladies in nice dresses who will coo over your little tuxedo, and then get tipsy on very expensive alcohol. bruce will schmooze. i’ll eat all the cucumber sandwiches and pretend to drink champagne. easy stuff.” 

“okay,” dick says uncertainly. “no performing.” 

“none at all,” says ric. 

he nods again. “i miss it.” 

“what?” 

“the performing,” he says, fidgeting with his napkin. “i haven’t been on a trapeze in months. not even a trampoline. m’gonna get rusty.” 

something in ric’s body twinges, a sympathetic ache. even if he can’t remember his time in the circus, his body remembers what it feels like to fly and yearns for the feeling. he stretches out his legs in front of him. “you haven’t practiced since--” 

“yeah,” dick interrupts and tears the napkin. “yeah. i climb the trees outside when i get bored, so m’not completely out of practice but.” he tears the napkin again. “never thought i’d miss doing flips over and over.” dick’s face crumples and for a second, ric think he might cry then and there.

“bruce doesn’t take you to the gym? or installed a trampoline yet? he’s got the space.”

“dunno. haven’t said anything, i guess.” 

“why not?” 

“i don’t want to impose,” says dick, pronouncing the words carefully, like they were impressed into him by someone. “it’s not nice to ask for things.” 

ric sighs, rubbing at his temple. “dick, you can ask for a trampoline. hell, you can ask for a whole gymnastics park and he’ll not even care. especially if it keeps you from hanging off the chandeliers.” 

“i don’t hang off the chandeliers,” says dick with a sniff. “i can’t fix ‘em if they break and then bruce will kick me out for breaking his stuff and i’ll go to jail.” 

“dick, no. no, bruce wouldn’t do that,” protests ric but dick shrugs, a small thing.

“he might,” he says savagely and then pops half of the torn napkin in his mouth, chewing furiously. ric stares for a split second, waiting for his brain to understand what exactly just happened.

“did you… did you just… eat? the napkin?” 

“no,” says dick, muffled. 

“why the hell did you do that?” 

“dunno,” he says mulishly and then spits the soggy tissue onto his plate. “wondered what it would taste like.” 

“well?” 

“not good. like paper. and toast.” 

“what the hell,” ric repeats, still confused out of his damn mind. dick crosses his arms over his chest. 

“you’re not supposed to swear in the kitchen.” 

“you’re also not supposed to eat _napkins_ ,” he snaps back and then lets out a long breath through his mouth. “okay, well. message received and no more questions. just… don’t do that at the gala tonight. spitting slimy things out of your mouth isn’t going to charm anyone.” 

“i won’t,” says dick, tipping his head to the side. “i already said i would be on my best behavior.” 

“shake on it?” ric asks, sticking out his hand. dick slaps his palm and starts to furiously shake it up and down. 

“deal,” he says. 

in hindsight, going to the gala was a bad idea. he had really only insisted on coming to piss bruce off, because bruce needed to get his heart rate up every once in a while for his health, but it was maybe not the best plan. alfred had rented him a nice suit for the evening, but nothing could be done about the scar stretching across his skull, arching over his ear. his hair is still short, and he refused to wear a wig that will only inevitably make him look stupid-- no _thank_ you, bruce. 

so, ric finds himself skulking along the back wall, his fingers tight around a flute of bubbly and ignoring the side glances being cast his way. he looks scary with the scar there. dangerous enough that not even the bulky men with thousand-dollar tuxedos dare to wander over his way, even if he is commandeering all the finger foods this side of the table. 

“so,” someone says in a slight midwestern accent. ric cranes his head to the side and takes in the man stuffed in a cheap suit, one that almost hides exactly how broad his shoulders are. his expression seems bland but ric can see a spark of mischief under the thick-framed glasses, “are you security or did mister wayne invite a member of the gotham mafia to this shindig?” 

“huh?” 

“no offense to you, but you seem a little outside of the normal upper echelon of gala attendees. the scar is pretty badass, though.” 

“oh,” says ric, his hand jumping up to his head automatically. “i still don’t understand.” 

“you look like a bodyguard. or mafia. haven’t quite decided on which one yet.” 

“so you decided to just outright ask someone who looks dangerous to you if they were part of the mafia?” ric asks, amused in spite of himself. “that’s dangerous.” 

the man shrugs. “i can handle myself. plus you’re blocking the good hoers d'oeuvres.” 

ric steps back so he can get to the table more easily, studying the man’s profile. he looks familiar in that old itch at the back of his mind way that ric’s been suffering through ever since he woke up. “do i… know you?” 

“i’m not real friendly with mafia or bodyguards, so i don’t think so.” 

“i’m neither of those things,” ric says after a pause. the guy shrugs again. 

“well, you look like it.” 

“i’m a, um, visiting friend of bruce’s. distant family.” 

“hmm. what did you say your name was?” 

“ric. ric gr--greene.” 

“ric greene, alright. nice to meet ya, i’m clark kent,” clark says, sticking out his hand. ric stares for a second before taking it. he’d heard about clark in passing, had seen superman in the batcave as bruce tried to figure out how to get ric’s memories back, but had never seen him in full _clark kent_ mode, incognito. 

“pleasure’s mine,” says ric automatically. “sorry to ask, but why are you here?” 

clark’s eyebrow goes up. “am i not supposed to be?” 

“no, it’s just-- aren’t you based in metropolis?” 

“i work for the _daily planet_ there, yes, but how did you…”

“i’ve read some of your articles,” ric lies, hoping his heartbeat isn’t giving him away. “i’m just curious how a _planet_ reporter ended up in gotham.” 

“bristol, technically,” says clark as he reaches up to adjust his glasses. ric waves a hand. 

“semantics.” 

“well, i’m here because metropolis people are here to report on, and i pissed off my editor by missing the first half of a meeting last week. so, my colleague got the political scandal and i got the billionaire buzz.” he nods towards a cluster of men on another side of the large ballroom. “you?” 

“i’m here because i like the food.” 

“that’s valid. the shrimp is really top notch.” 

“you get what you pay for, i guess.” 

“so you rented a tux for three hours, just to stand in the shadows and eat finger sandwiches, huh?” clark asks casually, sipping at his own flute. ric cuts him a glance. “there’s a tag hanging off your sleeve.”

“oh. bruce, uh, sort of forgot this was happening until this morning,” he admits and clark laughs so suddenly he splashes them both with champagne. 

“shit, sorry. i didn’t mean to do that but he forgot? seriously?” 

“yeah, alfred reminded him this morning and it was too late to reschedule.” 

“rich people,” clark mumbles under his breath, shaking his head. “doesn’t explain why you came.” 

“it annoyed bruce. plus, i volunteered for childcare.” 

“childcare? don’t they pay people to do that?” 

“bold of you to assume i’m not paid,” ric teases gently and rolls his shoulders back, listening to his neck crack with the movement. “no, dick came tonight.” 

“dick,” clark says, slow. “grayson, right? bruce wayne’s ward? isn’t he a little young to care for an orphan like that?” 

ric twists to look at clark dead on, scanning the all-too-innocent look on his face. “sorry if this is rude,” he says, “but you’re not going to get an exclusive on a minor from me. on anyone, really, but especially not about a kid who’s had a shitload of trauma happen to him recently.” 

“fair enough,” answers clark easily. “just thought i’d check. forget i asked.” 

“you ask an awful lot of questions.” 

clark tips his flute in ric’s direction. “journalist.” 

ric snorts and sets his empty glass on the table. “that’s a fancy word for being plain old nosy,” he says and it makes clark laugh, a real laugh, from deep down in his chest. 

“my mom says the same thing,” he says when he can stop laughing, a fond note to his voice. “she told me she knew i was going to be a journalist when she found me with my ear pressed to the door when my aunt came over and i was banned from the kitchen.” 

ric laughs too, rubbing his hand over the bristles on his head. he can picture it, a little boy with curly hair, listening furiously to the gossip that circulates around a town like smallville. 

“ric greene, huh. where ya from, ricky?” 

“not ricky,” he says as he pulls a face. “eh, visiting from bludhaven for a while. got stranded up here and bruce let me stay in his house.” 

“it’s a tiny thing. i’m surprised there’s even room for you.” 

“yeah, well. i don’t need a whole wing of the manor to myself but bruce insisted,” ric quips and it gets a chuckle out of clark. “nah, it’s good.” 

“off the record, i promise, but how is the new kid holding up?” asks clark, all casual, and ric pauses to think for a second. 

“strictly off the record?” 

“reporter’s honor,” he says solemnly, holding up his hand. “i’m just worried, you know? kid like that in a place like this, it could be a disaster.” 

ric sighs. “it’s going as well as it can. dick’s sad, of course, and bruce isn’t super used to kids around, like, long-term. he barely was a kid himself. but he’s got help, and he’s determined.” 

“hmm,” clark hums, a sharp look in his eyes as he tracks bruce across the room, still delicately holding the champagne flute with two fingers. he could shatter that glass without thinking, 

“you don’t have to worry, i promise,” says ric, fiddling with the afore-mentioned tag on his sleeve. it comes off with a gentle snap. “i know you’re a journalist, but you don’t have to believe the tabloids.” 

clark side-eyes him. “who said anything about tabloids?”

“no one, but you’re pretty obvious there, checking things out.” 

there’s a pause. “i don’t know what you mean.” 

“sure, you do. it’s a gala full of the billionaires you’re supposed to be keeping tabs on and you’re here, talking to me in the back of the ballroom about some kid. you’re checking up on bruce, making sure there’s nothing unsavory going on, like the rags are saying, huh?”

“am i that obvious?” asks clark, a muscle ticking in his cheek. 

“nah, i’m just observant.” 

“you’ve got to admit, ol’ brucie wayne playing dad to a circus boy? something doesn’t seem right about it.” he nods to where bruce is in the middle of a knot of seemingly supermodels, his hand splayed low on a blonde’s back. “he’s a playboy, not a father.” 

“awfully prejudiced of you, isn’t it?” 

clark shrugs. “just calling ‘em like i see ‘em.” 

“then see them differently,” ric snaps, a low hum of anger threading through his body. it’s a familiar-not familiar reflex to people talking about bruce taking him in like he did it for some sinister reason. “dick needed a place to stay and, i don’t know if you’ve noticed, but bruce has a lot of space. he’s a good person, even if he does dumb shit at parties, and you can fuck off with your gossip, alright?” 

“okay, okay,” clark says as he holds his hands up in a gesture of surrender. “i wasn’t trying to offend anyone. i was just-- worried, okay? i was worried. you can’t fault me for that.” 

“sure i can, if you’re talking shit,” he says back, adjusting the collar of his starched shirt that has gotten very itchy. “and if any of this appears in the _planet_ , you’ll be sorry.” 

“i already said it was off the record,” clark grumbles. “i’m not in the business of ruining lives like that.” 

“only if someone deserves it?” 

clark inclines his glass again and then swirls it around once before downing the rest of the liquid. idly, ric wonders if it does anything to his kryptonian chemistry, or if he’s just drinking it to fit in. 

“sorry,” he says after a few seconds of full silence. “it’s a… sore subject for me, apparently.” 

“no harm done,” clark tells him easily, a smile returning to his face. “i can appreciate the need for privacy. i’m just, uh. nosy.” 

“you don’t say,” ric grumbles good-naturedly before something shifts in the knot of pretty girls and one bruce wayne. “oh, what’s going on there?”

they both watch as bruce’s face freezes and he swings his head around the room, an intense look on his face that seems out of place with his causal persona. spotting ric, he detaches himself from the group and starts to make his way towards them.

“ooh, intrigue,” says a new voice, and both ric and clark startle. there’s a brunette at ric’s elbow, coming up his shoulder, even in heels, and a dress as black as night swishing around her body. “what do you think put a bee in his bonnet?”

“excuse me?” he asks but doesn’t get a response before bruce is in front of them, scowling. 

“selina,” bruce says tightly, nodding at the girl who dips her head, a coy smile caught up on her face. ric should have known. “ric. who are you?” he directs the question to clark, who jumps, suddenly seeming a lot more _smallville_ than he did a minute before. 

“uh, clark. clark kent. i’m a journalist for _the daily planet_ ,” he says, and sticks out his hand like he had done to ric a half hour ago. bruce gives it a perfunctory shake. 

“nice to meet you, kent. i’m sorry, but i need to talk to my friend here, would you mind giving us a little privacy? it’ll only take a second.” 

“uh,” clark drawls again, flicking his gaze between them. “sure, not at all.” 

bruce waits until he’s out of earshot-- or, would be, if he was human-- before turning his scowl in selina’s direction. 

“you too, miss kyle. if you wouldn't mind.” 

“i’m afraid i do mind, mister wayne,” she purrs, delicately lifting her wine glass to her mouth. her lipstick leaves a stain on the edge. bruce clicks his teeth. 

“isn’t there a saying about curiosity killing the cat?”

“mm, but you’re not planning on killing anyone, are you? don’t worry, darling. i’m good at keeping secrets,” she tells him with a wink, one that bruce determinedly refuses to blush at .

“bruce,” ric says to call his attention back to the problem. “what’s wrong?” 

“nothing’s _wrong_ , per se,” bruce grinds out, eyeing selina who innocently takes another drink of her wine. “but, erm. have you seen dick at all?” 

“dick? no, i haven’t,” ric says slowly and looks over bruce’s shoulder to search the glittering crowd, looking for a splash of dark hair among the glitz. “is he not here?” 

“i can’t find him, and alfred says he isn’t up in his room.” 

“you’ve lost a child?” selina says, horrified, and bruce rolls his eyes. 

“not lost. just _misplaced._ ” 

“bruce,” she chastises and he sends a glare her way. 

“he’s living here, it’s not like he’s gone anywhere. i just don’t know where he is, momentarily. do you, ric?” 

“i don’t,” ric says slowly, his brain working, “but i have an idea?”

bruce waves at him to continue and so the three of them make their way out, through the partygoers and waitstaff, the oddest search party ric can think of in that moment. clark frowns at them as they pass, a worried slant to his eyebrows, but ric gives him a reassuring thumbs up, mouthing _it’s fine._ clark doesn’t look convinced but he doesn’t join their group, stays lingering a few feet from the group of metropolis millionaires laughing. 

“i found a place yesterday,” ric says as they leave the ballroom. “i think he might’ve been using it as a hideout.” 

“a hideout? he has a room,” says bruce says and selina scoffs. 

“every person needs a hideout, darling. for the adventure.” 

“why are you here again, miss kyle?” he asks over his shoulder, somewhere between annoyed and endeared. ric smirks to himself, just a tiny bit. he didn’t see much of selina while he was at the manor, back in his own time, but future-bruce used the same tone when he mentioned her once or twice. it’s cute, in its own way. “i thought you didn’t like children.” 

“maybe i was bored of conversation with your ditzy girlfriends.” 

“they’re not ditzy,” bruce grumbles, nearly under his breath, and ric presses his lips together so he doesn’t laugh. they’re just crossing the middle of the foyer when bruce stops, flinging his hand up in the universal sign for _wait._ selina and ric stop in their tracks as well, watching as bruce cocks his head to the side.

it takes a second, but ric hears it then: a tiny, wet sniffle, coming from above their heads. they crane their chins up and take in the extravagant chandelier, hanging sixteen feet above their heads, and the child-sized smudge sitting in the branches. 

“shit,” ric says. 

“dick?” bruce calls and they listen to the tinkle of crystal as dick shift enough to peer down at them. 

“yeah?” he says, almost too quiet to hear, in a voice that sounds full and heavy. 

“what are you doing up there?” 

“wasn’t sure if i was allowed to leave the party.” 

“so you climbed into the chandelier?” bruce asks, disbelieving, and dick shrugs a shoulder.

“it seemed like a good compromise.” 

“christ,” ric mutters under his breath, rubbing at his eyes. he shouldn’t have mentioned chandeliers to him this morning, put the idea in his head. bruce looks at him quizzically and then back up at the child far too far off the ground. 

“do you want to come down?” 

dick is quiet for a minute, thinking about bruce’s question, and then shakes his head. “no.” 

“you can’t stay up there, it’s dangerous,” says bruce and something in the tone makes dick shrink back into the crystal, curling up into a ball. it makes the chandelier jangle, swinging gently from its anchor. “dick--” 

“he’s an acrobat, bruce,” ric interrupts. “he’s not going to fall.” 

“it’s not him falling that i’m worried about, it’s the chandelier coming out of the ceiling and plummeting to the ground with him in it,” bruce hisses back, hoarse with worry. “i’m too heavy to go up there to pull him to safety and, to my knowledge, we don’t have a ladder tall enough to reach him.” 

“well, darling, you don’t have to ask me twice,” selina says and bends down to unhook her heels from her feet, handing one after the other to a confused bruce. 

“i didn’t ask you to do anything,” he says, a perplexed expression on his face, and she laughs. 

“if i had known we were climbing, i’d have worn something a little easier to climb in. ah, oh well,” she trills, regretful, and then bounds towards the long bannister that winds its way up through the different manor storeys. 

“selina--” bruce snaps as she climbs up onto the wood and starts to make her way up, her steps quick. 

“quiet, bruce. i don’t need your criticism for this part.” 

he throws his hands up in the air and glares as she slowly but surely goes higher up off the ground. there’s a smattering of applause from the room behind them and he checks his watch, letting out a breath through his nose.

“shit, it’s time for the speeches.” 

“go talk about your foundation, we’re just fine here,” selina calls down. she’s nearly at the top now. “your handsomely rugged friend can spot me if i need it.” 

ric can’t stop himself from recoiling at the compliment, shaking his head when bruce turns his glare onto him. 

“she’s right, b. they’re going to notice if you don’t go. we can handle this.” 

bruce tips his head back to search out dick once more and then back at ric. “do not let him fall,” he warns, and then twists on his polished heel, stalking back into the ballroom with long, agitated strides. 

selina’s made it into the chandelier by now, one leg stretched long from the bannister to the most solid arm, and she slides smoothly into the cluster like it’s no trouble at all. 

“cat burglars,” ric grumbles under his breath and kicks off his own shoes to follow in selina’s footsteps. 

“who are you?” he hears dick ask over the squeak of his bare feet on the wood. selina hums for a minute, resettling herself into the chandelier. 

“selina kyle.” 

“who?” 

“selina,” she repeats. “why are you up here?” 

“i told you,” dick says around a sniff. “i wasn’t sure if i could leave the party. how did you get up here?” 

“i’m good at climbing.” 

“so am i.” 

“i can see that,” she says with a laugh. “what made you want to leave?” 

by now, ric’s as far as he can go on the bannisters, the chandelier about a foot away. he sits on the edge and contemplates trying to join the two. the anchor looks tenuous as it is, so he doesn’t dare, just dangles his feet over the edge of the balcony. 

“everyone’s so mean,” dick says plaintively, wrapping his arms around his knees. “they’re just pinching my cheeks and saying things i don’t want to hear, and i couldn’t-- i couldn’t hear it anymore. so i got away.” 

“hmm. that’s awfully smart of you. i would’ve started stabbing people, i think.” 

dick looks at her. “i’m not allowed to stab people. that’s a bad thing to do.” 

selina laughs, high and clear, like the sound of crystal hitting against crystal. “well, sometimes, being bad is necessary. sometimes it’s being good.” 

“what?” dick asks, wrinkling his forehead and ric rolls his eyes. 

“stop messing up the kid’s morals,” he calls and she tosses him a disdainful look over her shoulder. “you’ll confuse him.” 

“excuse me,” she says icily, “who are you?” 

“that’s ric,” dick says before he can answer, pulling at the neck of his shirt. “he’s--” 

“i’m a friend,” interrupts ric meaningfully. “of bruce’s.” 

“aren’t we all friends of bruce wayne?” selina says as she smoothes a hand down her dress, flicking invisible lint off the fabric. 

“no,” dick says. 

“i highly doubt that,” she says and then yawns, flashing her teeth like a cat would. “well, this is getting boring. i’m going back inside to see how red bruce’s face is on stage because he’s worrying about you. nice to meet you, dickie.” 

she adjusts something around her thighs and then bends backwards until she’s hanging upside down from her legs, all glittery in light of the foyer. 

“selina--” ric says as she rights herself, her palms on the metal of the chandelier, and swings towards the balcony in an arc. she lands, soundlessly of course, and disappears in the direction of the stairs. they both watch her go, quiet as she picks up her heels off the ground and slings them over her shoulder. 

“she’s weird,” dick comments. 

“yup. very weird. are you planning on getting down anytime soon?” 

“uh uh,” he says and curls his hand around the middle of the chandelier, looking nervous. “i don’t want to.” 

“why not? it doesn’t look very comfortable there.” 

“it’s fine,” insists dick and ric sighs, catching sight of clark right inside the door. he’s not facing them straight on but ric can tell he’s paying attention, just in case something happens. it’s comforting, in its own way. “i don’t want anyone to get me.” 

he focuses again on the boy in the chandelier and frowns. “what do you mean?”

“the guards.” 

“what guards?” 

“the ones from jail,” dick explains, his voice high and thin, threaded with fear. “the jail for kids, where i was before.” 

ric’s frown gets deeper. “juvie? you were in juvie?” 

“that one.” dick kicks his leg gently, just enough to set the chandelier swinging. “they didn’t have enough beds so they put me there for a while. i didn’t like it.” 

“yeah, no shit, kid. why do you think they’re coming to get you?” 

“cause they said they were gonna. they said that sooner or later, i was gonna do something bad again and they’d come to put me back in my cell. it’s inevitable.” he says the word carefully, letter by letter, like he’s only heard it a few times. 

“dick…” ric starts, not really sure where he’s going, but dick interrupts with a panicked stream of words, each one more breathless than the last. 

“i was bad and bruce is gonna be mad and he’s going to call the guards to come and that’s why i can’t come down from here. i don’t want to go back, ric. i don’t want to.” 

“hey hey hey,” ric babbles as dick’s bottom lip wobbles. if he cries, there’s no guarantee he’ll be able to keep his balance on the thin bar and ric’s not quick enough to snatch him out of thin air. “hey now, don’t cry. don’t cry, okay? here, how about this: you get down off of there before bruce is done and we’ll run away to your closet, where he doesn’t know where you are for a while. i’ll make sure no one tries to get you, okay? they won’t be able to get past me.” 

“you do look pretty scary,” dick says in a small voice, wiping his nose on his sleeve. ric nods, half of a laugh strangled in his throat. from the ballroom, applause starts up again, a staccato against the quiet of the foyer. 

“i do; they’ll be scared of me. but we gotta go now, okay? bruce is almost done.” 

dick considers this for a moment, and then scoots closer to ric, both of his feet kicking in earnest now. “okay,” he says. “catch.” 

and then he fucking launches himself into the air, a splash of boy against the empty sky, coming straight for ric. ric barely has time to ground himself, his feet automatically spreading to drop his center of gravity, before dick is hurtling into his arms. 

in the other room, clark flinches. 

“go, go, go,” urges dick as he twists around, scrabbling onto ric’s back and locking his arms around his neck. “before bruce comes out.” 

ric nods, readjusts his grip, and then breaks for the other side of the manor, careening wildly down the empty corridors with dick bumping along with him. dick laughs, seemingly in spite of himself, and ric does too, skidding to a stop in front of the empty linen closet dick has made his sanctuary. dick shimmies off his back, landing on bare feet and pushing open the door. 

“okay, kid,” ric says when they’re all situated, the light turned off so it can’t be spotted in the hallway and both of them on opposite sides of the closet. “start talking.” 

dick fidgets with a blanket, pulling a corner over his knees and not making eye contact. “talk about what?” 

“you know what. what happened back there? i want to know all of it, start to finish.” dick fidgets some more. “c’mon, you can’t play this game with me,” ric says impatiently. “i’m you, you can’t lie.” 

“ _might_ be me,” dick corrects and then sighs, slouching back against the wall. “they kept wanting me to do tricks. bruce said i wasn’t supposed to.” 

“you love showing off your gymnastics.”

“yeah, but not when people like that are demanding it. it feels… icky. like i’m some sort of dog they’re showing off.” he twitches. “one of them called me a circus brat.” 

ric raises his eyebrows. “they said that to you?” 

“they didn’t know i could hear,” he says, wiping his face with an arm again. “one of them wondered how long bruce would keep me.” his breathing picks up, rapid and panicked, like he’s about to hyperventilate. “i don’t want them to take me back, ric. i don’t want to go back to that place.”

“dick,” ric says, as gently as he can because dick is on the edge of tears, a hairsbreadth from tipping over into crying. “dick, hey. no one’s making you go back to juvie and no one will.” 

“bruce might.” 

“he won’t.” 

“he might,” dick argues in a hoarse voice. “he’ll get tired of me, or i’ll do something bad, and he won’t want me to stay here anymore and i’ll go back to being a prisoner.” 

“you said that earlier,” ric muses, tipping his head to the side. “twice. dick, has bruce told you that he’ll send you back?” 

“doesn't have to. everyone else did.” 

“listen, i know you barely know me, but trust me, kid. the last thing bruce would do is send you to jail like that. you’re his ward now and he won’t let anything like that happen to you, not now, not ever. you get to keep him forever, okay? and he keeps you. no take backsies.” 

“he doesn’t want to keep me. he doesn’t even _like_ me.” 

“whoa, what?,” ric says, jerking back like he’s been stunned. “what did you just say?” 

“bruce doesn’t like me.” 

“that-- that’s bullshit.” 

“s’not,” dick tells him sadly. “he doesn’t ever talk to me or be in the same place. he always leaves the room as fast as he can when i’m there.” his face crumples. “i’m just a mistake, like the lady said.” 

ric’s head feels like it’s hurting with all this new information-- _wrong_ information-- getting jammed in there. the thought of bruce not caring for richard grayson, any iteration of him, feels wrong, even as fucked up as his head is. it’s the one thing ric’s always been sure of, since he woke up in that damn hospital bed: bruce cares about him and nothing could stop that from being true. that dick doesn’t know it’s true makes ric want to punch something, hard. preferably bruce. 

he takes a deep breath, trying to figure out where to start untangling this whole mess. 

“bruce likes you an awful lot, dick,” he says as gently as he can. dick shakes his head, wild, and presses farther back into the shadows. “he does, and i don’t… i don’t know how to convince you of that. i don’t think you will be convinced, not until bruce tells it to you himself, one or a hundred times. the fact that he hasn’t yet is, frankly, extremely shitty of him. he’s not going to send you back, dick, no matter what anyone else tells you.” 

“but how can you be _sure_?” 

“because i trust bruce, okay? i trust him with my life, even with all the bad stuff that’s happened. i trust bruce. and if you can’t trust him, you can trust me. you. me, whatever. or you can trust alfred. you know he likes you too, don’t you?” 

dick nods, staring at the ground instead of ric. “alfred’s nice.” 

“alfred’s nice and bruce told me not to say anything about the future, but i’m going to break that rule because it’s important. you never get sent back to juvie because of bruce, never ever ever. you grow up in this manor with alfred making you cookies and bruce learning all your acrobat tricks and it’s not perfect but, goddamn, it is still good. i promise.” he leans over and sticks his pinky out, silently daring dick. “pinky promise.” 

dick looks at the finger for a long second before wrapping his own pinky around ric’s, shaking their hands once. “you can’t break a pinky swear.” 

“i know. that’s why i did it.” 

dick shakes it again and then pitches forward, only just landing in ric’s arms. ric gathers him up automatically, trying to keep them both from losing their balance, as dick curls up in his lap. he presses his face to the starched collar of ric’s suit and stays there, his back jumping every few seconds. 

he’s crying, ric realises after too long of a pause, near-silently-- deep, heart-wrenching sobs that make you feel like you’ve been wrung out and there’s nothing you can do until they’ve worked themselves out. readjusting his position on the shelf, ric carefully puts his arms around dick’s thin torso and waits for dick to stop crying, however long it takes.

he finds himself back in the ballroom around midnight, the last dregs of the gala drifting through the doors to a different party, one that will last until the end of the night. across the room, clark is talking to one of the servers and watching ric pick his way through it all. ric gives him a thumbs up and something in clark loosens, his shoulders relaxing and the intensity to his eyes dropping away. 

an intensity that bruce has only multiplied, seething out of him like an almost physical thing as he steps in the middle of ric’s path. 

“where is he,” he demands, his tie hanging loose around his neck and his shirt open. he looks furious in a way that means he’s terrified, laser-focused and almost scarily still. “where is dick?” 

“he’s fine, b,” ric tells him tiredly. “he’s sleeping.” 

“he’s not in his room, i checked.”

“yeah, he’s in a closet somewhere hiding out.” 

bruce’s eyes nearly bug out of his head. “a _closet_?” 

“a big one,” ric says and then sighs. “it’s fine, it reminds him of the circus. it’s comforting.” 

“he has a room.” 

“yeah, and his room is large and impersonal and a far cry from a trundle that pulls out from his parents’ bed. let him sleep for a while.”

bruce scowls, deep and threatening, staring daggers at the door over ric’s shoulder, like he’s going to go turn the manor upside down in search of the boy. 

“he was upset,” he says.

“yes.” 

“why.”

ric takes in a deep breath and consciously pitches his voice low, as nonthreatening as he can manage. “listen, i know you’re out of your depth here with a nine year old, and i know we’re both tired, so i’m not going to make a big scene. but god, bruce, you have got to do a whole lot fucking better with dick, okay? in everything. you’re hurting him and it has got to stop.” 

“i don’t understand what you mean,” bruce says after a moment, still scowling, stiff as a board. 

“i mean that you just threw him into the wolves without any preparation! you know the people here would eat him alive and you just let them, without so much of a warning,” ric says hotly, tugging off his own tie and throwing caution to the wind. “i know you’re allergic to showing any genuine emotion, bruce, but my god. _care_ a little.” 

“i care,” bruce answers in a voice that’s bondering on a growl, dangerous and batman-like. “i care about dick. how can you say otherwise?” 

“i can say that because dick doesn’t think so! dick doesn’t even think you _like_ him, nevermind anything above that.”

“i don’t-- he didn’t-- he’s never expressed that to me.” 

“yeah, because he’s terrified you’re going to send him back to juvie if he does anything to make you mad! he tiptoes around you, certain that you’re going to decide it’s all been a mistake and throw him back in jail. holy _shit_ , b, you are _hurting_ him.” 

“he thinks i hate him?” 

“yeah, he fucking does, becuase you barely ever stay in the same room as the kid for any longer than five minutes.” 

“i don’t know what i’m doing!”

“okay sure, this is all new to you. but that doesn’t give you the excuse to be your dickish self to a scared child,” ric snaps back, curling his fingers into his palm so his nails cut into the skin. “he cried himself to sleep tonight because he’s fucking terrified of you.” 

to anyone else standing in the room, it would look like bruce’s face hasn’t changed, but ric knows him well enough to spot the way his lips go thin and his cheeks go pale, the way he is rattled. for a vicious second, ric is satisfied. 

“i didn’t know,” he mumbles, so, so quiet. “i didn’t realise.” 

“yeah, no shit,” says ric and lets out all the air he had been holding in his lungs, relaxing his shoulders. 

“what do i do?” 

“you’re asking me?” he asks, running his hand over his head. “the amnesiac who dropped in from the future who can’t remember shit? good fuckin’ plan.” 

“yeah, but maybe if you thought—”

“i swear to god, bruce,” ric warns, his eyes dangerously narrowed, “if you tell me to _think harder_ , i will lay you flat on you back with one punch.”

“i’d like to see you try,” bruce hisses back, churlish, and it’s so outside of who ric knows bruce to be, even just a little, that he blinks. “i’m just trying to get some advice from you, seeing the kid likes you better than he does me.” 

“because i talk to him! besides, he’s me. i know how to talk to myself,” he grouses and bruce snorts, rubbing his eyes with his fingers. “a good start may be telling him that you aren’t going to send him to juvie whenever you feel like it. another start might be trying to convince him that you actually like him. just a thought.” 

“i told you you’d remember if you thought harder,” bruce says nastily and ric rolls his eyes. 

“that’s not remembering, that’s just common sense, dumbass.”

a muscle ticks in bruce’s jaw. “you’re fucking annoying, i hope you know that.” 

“so i’ve been told.” 

bruce sighs and yanks on his tie so it falls down into his hand, crumpling it into his fist. “fuck, i did not think this through.” 

“what?” 

“adopting a child.” 

“yeah, i can tell,” ric says. “you’re not very good at fatherhood. wardhood. whatever.” 

“it’s not like i planned it! i’m twenty-four and acted on a whim and now i’m a legal guardian of a nine year old, okay? i’m _trying_. i didn’t even grow up with children, or parents, so cut me some fucking slack.”

“no. no, you don’t get any slack on this. fix it, or i will kick your ass into wednesday and no, you won’t be able to stop me.” 

“brave words.” 

“you trained me yourself,” ric tells him and then unbuttons the top two buttons of his shirt. “just... go take the kid to a damn trampoline and let him jump around. he’s bored as hell without anything to occupy him.” 

“it’s summer. he goes to school during the year.” 

“yeah, and he’s an acrobat. he needs to do flips and shit, it’s in his blood. trust me, i know.” 

bruce grinds his teeth together for a few seconds and glowers again at the door before looking back at ric. “that’s a good point,” he says reluctantly and ric shrugs, smug. 

“i know it is. now, i’m going the fuck to bed because i’m tired, and if you say one more idiotic thing, i won’t be able to stop myself from punching your face in.”

“good night,” bruce says, too many years of politeness hammered into him by alfred to forgo now. ric waves a hand and turns on his heel, weaving his way through the dark mansion to the little room that’s become his, avoiding the shadows in the corners until he gets to bed. 

he wakes up around dawn, all at once, like someone had just walked over his grave. someone had told him that expression once, must have, but he can’t remember who, for the life of him now. he stares up at the ceiling, watching the blackness turn to a charcoal and then to an ash, light leaking into through the window by inches. with a groan, he hoists himself from the mattress and pads to the kitchen in search of a dawntime snack. 

“oh,” says alfred, startled, when ric appears in the door. he doesn’t look like he’s slept, weariness pulling on the corners of his eyes. “it’s you.”

“it’s me,” ric agrees and snags a cookie from the batch in the jar. “did bruce go out after the party?” 

alfred frowns the tiniest bit. “unfortunately. he is on his way back now, thank goodness.” 

“long patrol.” 

“it usually is, after some sort of function,” he says, sighing. “at least he’s not hurt tonight. we can all go to bed in peace. what brings you down here?”

“i don’t know. my eyes snapped open and i couldn’t sleep, so i hoped something to eat would help.” 

“there’s lavender tea in the cupboard. it’s good for relaxing, if you would like some.” 

ric hums, pressing his fingers onto the crumbs he’d left on the counter. “that sounds good, actually.” alfred starts to get up but ric waves him back, crossing over to flick on the kettle himself. “i’ve got it.”

“make a pot. i’ll have some as well.” 

he nods and pulls down the well-worn teapot over the fridge, stained on the inside from years of tannins. it’s a nice looseleaf, riddled with flowers and purple buds, so he dumps a few spoonfuls into the the strainer. it’s all on automatic, his hands running through the motions like he’s done it a hundred times, even though he can’t actually remember when the last time he made a cuppa was. 

“this smells nice,” he says and alfred nods. 

“we buy it to order from a lavender farm in canada. it was mrs. wayne’s favourite, back-- back before. heaven knows we need some more calming in this house.”

when the kettle goes off, he splashes bit into the pot, swirling it around, and then tips it out into the sink. 

“you warmed the porcelain,” alfred says with a note of surprise. ric looks up from where he’s carefully pouring the water over the tea and nods. 

“isn’t that the proper way to do it?” 

“if you’re british, yes.” 

“oh,” ric says as he looks down at the slightly steaming teapot. “you must have taught me.” 

“indeed,” he says, quiet. ric brings the tea over to the table, two cups hooked through his fingers, and sits down catty corner from alfred, flipping a cup in the air as he sets the other neatly down, catching it just in time before it shatters across the tile floor. “amusing.” 

“you pick things up in the circus,” says ric. “even if i can’t remember the circus at all.” 

“love is more thicker than forget,” alfred murmurs and ric quirks a curious eye at him. 

“hmm?” 

“it’s a poem,” he explains, running a finger along the the rim of his cup. “‘love is more thicker than forget / more thinner than recall / more seldom than a wave is wet / more frequent than to fail’.” 

ric chews on the words for a minute, turning them over in his mind. “i don’t think i understand.” 

“it’s a poem, master richard. there are many ways to understand it, i’m afraid.” he sighs. “but, in this current moment, i mean to say that you can’t forget what is most important, i suppose. what else have you retained?” 

ric blinks at the slight topic change, but continues on anyway. “i don’t know. it’s a lot of instinct, a lot of feelings. i don’t even know i can do them until i’m halfway through a movement. i get antsy if i stay in one place for too long. handstands and cartwheels are as easy as breathing, if i don’t think about it.” 

“indeed,” repeats alfred. “master richard climbed up to the chandelier like it was a ladder. he barely batted an eye at the height.” 

“you saw?”

“from across the foyer. i was too far away to do anything about it.” he’s quiet as ric pours out the tea, finally seeped enough, and then stares down at its depths. “i knew he was acrobatic, of course, but i hadn’t really seen his skills until now.” 

“he’s trying his hardest to be good,” ric replies. “unobtrusive. he’d be skidding down the bannisters if he thought he could get away with it.” 

alfred’s mouth twitches down, something like regret on his face. “perhaps we have not made this place as welcoming as i thought we had done.” 

“bruce could be a lot better. i told him to take dick to the trampoline park sometime.”

“a fine idea.” 

“he could teach b something,” he says lightly and alfred sends him an amused look over the top of his cup. “it would be good for the both of them.” 

alfred chuckles. “humility is perhaps one virtue that master bruce does not possess in abundance.” 

“just that one?” quips ric and then swirls the dregs of the lavender tea, ponders a refill. alfred’s refreshing his cup before he can even move, a steady movement, well-practiced. “how long until he gets home?” 

alfred looks at a pager-like thing beside him. “oh, just a minute or two. he’s approaching the cave now. he’ll be down for a protein bar and some electrolytes soon.” 

“he doesn’t keep them in the batcave?” 

“batcave?” alfred says with a laugh. “that certainly is a name.”

“oh, just wait,” ric says, thinking of all the things that come later: _batcave_ and _batmobile_ and _batcomputer_ and _batcow_. “just you wait.” 

he chuckles again, thumbing over the handle of the simple white mug. “he’d keep them down there if he could, but i refuse to wait in the damp if i can help it and i’d rather i see him before the night ends.”

“you don’t want him to hide his injuries,” he realizes. 

“perhaps.”

“you’re devious.”

alfred straightens his shoulders. “i’ve picked up some tools along my twenty years of attending to master bruce, yes.”

ric laughs, and then laughs harder when bruce stumbles into the kitchen, looking grumpy and mussed. he gives the two a dark look.

“what is funny?” 

“nothing, nothing,” says ric. bruce grunts and swings open the fridge to pull out a cold drink. 

“how are you feeling, master bruce?” alfred asks carefully and bruce shrugs, wiping across his mouth with the sleeve of his underlayer. 

“fine. easy night.” 

“no stab wounds or gunshots i should be informed about?” 

bruce looks down at himself and then shakes his head. “none tonight.” 

“you were lucky.”

“it’s talent, not luck.” 

“if you say so,” alfred says with only the slightest hint of doubt. 

“why are you both here?” asks bruce. 

“couldn’t sleep. came down for some tea,” ric offers warily. “is that allowed?”

bruce growls again, a frustrated sound. “it’s a free country,” he says. “i’m going upstairs.”

they’ve barely called goodnight after him before he’s disappeared into the depths of the house, an extra protein bar clenched in his fist. alfred sighs. 

“well, i do believe that is my cue to retire,” he says as he stands, gathering up the dishes to set in the sink and smothering a yawn. ric hums. 

“ don’t let me keep you up.” 

“rest well, master richard.” 

ric switches the lights off after he goes and it leaves the whole house gloomy, even with dawn just peeking over the horizon. it’s not hard to imagine ghosts wandering through these halls, somber and terrifying. he shudders. 

his brain is still wired, even after all the lavender tea, and it makes him feel odd, jumpy and twitchy like it’s right before a brawl at the bar. shaking his head to try and recalibrate himself, he stops. he hadn’t noticed where he was going, too lost in his own thoughts, and he’s lost in a part of the manor he doesn’t recognize. 

“shit,” he says, drifting his hand along the wall and furiously trying not to think of ghosts again. he takes three right turns and then spies light coming through a cracked door. it’s the office, the one that leads down to the batcave, and a rush of relief floods his body. he can pick his way through the house from here. 

there’s a shiver of footsteps and ric freezes, pressing his back to the wallpapered corridor wall and carefully aligning himself with the shadows, his whole being tensed for a fight. down the hall, a shadow grows long against the floor and ric’s breathing evens out, his fists curl into a ball. 

the figure that appears is short, shorter than expected, and remarkably solid for a ghost. he narrows his eyes; he recognizes that head of hair. it’s dick, with a blanket wrapped around his shoulders like a cape again. ric opens his mouth to ask why dick’s awake at this hour when dick pushes the blanket away. he’s wearing a leotard and shorts in a dark forest green instead of pajamas, and there’s mud splattered on his arms and shoes. ric rears back, hitting his head on a picture frame of some solemn wayne ancestor, and makes enough noise that dick looks around as he passes, picking up the speed as he goes. 

“what the fuck?” ric whispers under his breath. his heart feels like it’s beating a frantic staccato out of his chest. “what the fuck?” 

he’s moving before he registers it, crossing the hallway in a few long stride. bruce looks up, startled, when he bursts into the study. 

“uh…” 

“you _lied_ to me,” ric snarls, everything in him furious, and bruce frowns, putting down the paper he had been examining. 

“what?” 

“you fucking lied to me. you told me you weren’t training dick as robin and you fucking lied and fucking _believed_ you. what the fuck, bruce? he’s a _child,_ not a goddamn weapon to be curated.” 

“didn’t you already yell at me once today?” bruce asks, irritated. “i don’t understand what you’re talking about.” 

“cut the bullshit, i _saw_ him outside, okay? i saw him in his little robin getup a few minutes ago, and i saw him the other night too, and you can’t argue your way out of this one, you goddamn _asshole_. you’re going to kill him, do you understand that? you’re going to kill him, like you almost killed me because you’re too much of a selfish asshole to listen to anyone else but your own goddamn inflated head!”

“if you would shut your damn mouth for a second,” bruce hisses as he stands up from behind his desk, “you would hear me when i say that i do not know what you’re raging about, _richard_.” 

“i’m talking about robin,” ric hisses back and there’s so much anger and betrayal and other things he can’t bother to name boiling him up from the inside out. bruce’s frown gets deeper.

“what?” 

“don’t you fucking play with me, bruce. not about this.” 

“i’m not playing anything,” bruce says sharply. “what the fuck is a robin?”

“c’mon, batman and robin. the dynamic duo, the crime-stoppers of gotham. the child you trained to be a distraction and a weapon who gets fucked up in the head so many times over until he lands in the past with no memory.”

“i don’t know what it’s like in your history—”

“neither do i.”

bruce gives him a look, one that ric refuses to be cowed by. “—but here, batman does not have a sidekick.”

ric’s heart twinges a bit at _that_ word in _that_ tone, even during this argument. he doesn’t know much but his body remembers that that’s supposed to hurt, even if bruce didn’t mean it like that.

“partners,” he corrects and bruce makes a frustrated noise in the back of his throat. 

“i work alone,” he says and ric almost laughs at the sheer ridiculousness of it, even if here he is arguing against just that. 

“if you work alone, then why was dick dressed in dark clothes, creeping quietly through the house?” 

“he _what_?” 

“i just saw him outside your door, just now. he was in a leotard and coming in for the night.” 

“that’s not-- you said he was asleep!” 

“when i left him, he _had_ fallen asleep,” ric argues back and then narrows his eyes at bruce. “what are you saying?” 

“i’m saying that i don’t have a sidekick or a partner, and i have no idea what dick would be doing out at this hour!” 

“oh my god,” says ric. “somehow, that makes it worse. what the fuck, bruce?” 

“i am really tired of you judging me,” bruce grinds out, shoving past ric into the hallway. 

“stop doing things that are stupid, then.” 

“where did you say dick’s closet was?”

“here,” ric says and leads bruce to the little linen closet, swinging open the door and scanning the room. bruce takes in the space with a carefully neutral expression, practically taking up all the room with just how big he is, and then quirks an eyebrow at ric. 

“here?” 

“i thought so,” he answers as he takes in the empty shelves, covered in a pile of blankets and pillows. 

“you check the kitchen and i’ll check his bedroom?” bruce asks and he’s already in the hallway, so ric peels off in the opposite direction, finding his way downstairs as fast as he can. 

the kitchen is quiet and dark, no sign of a nine year old anywhere, so ric takes the stairs two at a time until he lands at dick’s bedroom, where bruce is pulling the door shut. 

“he’s in there,” he tells ric, a frown settling on his face again. “fast asleep, with no evidence otherwise.”

“huh.” 

“sleepwalking?” 

“doubtful. he seemed aware.” 

“sure,” bruce says in a tone that doesn’t seem very sure at all. he rubs his face with a hand and then yawns, big enough to crack his jaw. “if you can hold off yelling at me for a further twelve hours, i really need to sleep before i collapse.”

“fine,” ric says, yawning himself. “fine.” 

bruce nods and pulls at his shirt, the dark grey kind he wears under the suit, leaving without so much as a good night. ric leans against the wall, digging his knuckles into his eyes and tries to understand what the hell happened to get him in this mess.

bruce doesn’t have ground sensors because bruce hasn’t yet figured out why it’s necessary, so ric sits on the roof instead. it’s that sticky time of summer where everything is hot and overwhelming, even at night, and he shifts on the hot tiles as he waits. gotham glitters in front of him, somehow managing to be hard and sharp through the smog. bludhaven’s worse. 

he’d avoided everyone all day, needing his own space after two arguments and a lot of emotion. they’d avoided him too, not even dick seeking him out, and ric had found himself at the top of the manor at ten, trying to prove himself right to an old version of someone he doesn’t even remember. 

“christ,” he mutters into the dark. “what the fuck is my life.” 

ric is just about to climb down, defeated, when something moves at the corner of his vision. he snaps his head around to look, squinting through the dark, and stiffens. he knows that run, knows it as intimately as he would know anything. it’s him, it’s _dick_ out on the lawn, dressed in dark colors and sprinting across the vast manor lawn to the knot of trees in the distance. ric shimmies his way down the drainpipe and follows, arriving just in time to see dick dart across a branch over the wall, flipping once before he presumably lands on the other side. ric sighs, scratching at an itch on his cheek, and then starts up the tree after him. 

he’s never been so annoyed to be right as he follows dick through the forest towards the city, keeping a fair amount of space between them so dick doesn’t hear him. there’s a reason dick’s out and it can’t be good. gotham is no place for a child after dark, even a child like dick. 

soon, the forest turns to concrete, neighborhoods slinking by, and then gets seedier, a little more rundown. ric inches closer to dick, keeping an eye on him just in case. the young ward of bruce wayne would be worth a small fortune if anyone recognized him, and ric’s fighting skills are inconsistent at best. that is, if dick doesn’t get hurt first, which is far more likely this part of town swarming with mafia goons. 

dick doesn’t stop until he gets to a shadowy building on the corner of sixth and applegate, big and looming. the sign out front says it’s a library. dick takes a long look at the door before curving around to the back where there’s a fire escape. 

“hell no,” ric mutters as the kid starts to climb, not even faltering at the slippery metal or the long drop if he slips. “ _hell_ no.” still dick keeps going, up and up and up, until he’s rolling over the top of the building and out of sight. 

“fuck,” he breathes out and then starts to climb himself, as quietly as he can. he’s sweating by the time he’s halfway to the top, his fingers slipping off the rungs every once in a while, cursing the heat and gotham and the fact that nothing can keep dick grayson out of trouble, not even himself. 

he’s two feet away when there’s a thud and a muffled swear, and ric nearly launches himself up as he scrambles over the edge, somersaulting into a crouch with his fists up so he’s ready to fight whatever comes at him. blinking at the rooftop, he takes it all in. it’s empty, all except dick near a door, yanking hard on the handle. he pulls again and nothing happens, so he kicks the door furiously with his toes, over and over until ric’s afraid he’ll break something. 

“hey, hey,” he calls and dick jumps a foot in the air, whirling around. he can see the whites of his eyes from here as dick looks about ready to bolt. that or punch ric in the face. 

“ric?” dick asks, confused. “what are you doing here?” 

“could ask the same thing of you, kid,” ric says easily as he creeps forward, his arms in the air so dick knows he’s not carrying anything. “what are you doing on a library rooftop at one in the morning?” 

dick scowls. “none of your business.” 

“hell yeah, it is,” he retorts. “why are you kicking the door?” 

for a second, dick doesn’t look like he’s going to answer anything, just stand stubbornly there with his arms firmly crossed in front of his dark green leotard. but then, he slumps, glaring at the ground. 

“it won’t open,” he says to his feet. “they locked it.” 

“they usually lock doors at night.” 

“not this one. they’ve kept it open most of the time but they must have caught on that i’ve been getting in.” 

“christ, dick,” ric says, shutting his eyes briefly. “how long have you been sneaking out?” 

“a few weeks,” he admits begrudgingly, slamming his heel into the metal door behind him as punctuation. ric lets out a long, long exhale through his nose.

“why? did bruce put you up to this? are you training to be robin?” 

“bruce? why would bruce send me out at night? and what’s a robin?” 

“it’s-- nothing.” 

“my mom used to call me robin, cause i was born on the first day of spring.” 

ric closes his eyes again, a faint ghost of pain washing over his body, like the ache of a missing limb after it’s been amputated. “i know.” 

“why do you think bruce sent me?” 

“because it’s complicated.” 

“that’s just what adults say when they don’t want kids to know stuff.” 

“yeah, well, that’s exactly what’s happening and the only answer you’re gonna get. bruce can explain it to you when he wants to. does he know you’re here?”

dick’s mouth twists into something guilty. “he doesn’t know. s’why i’m out so late, because he’s asleep.” 

“he’s not,” ric says without thinking and dick gives him a look. 

“course he is, it’s one in the morning.” 

“he, uh. doesn’t go to bed until very late, trust me on that. what’s in the library that you need so desperately?” 

“what are you, the cops?” dick complains and ric rolls his eyes, shifting his weight. 

“just tell me, kid.” 

dick scowls again, scuffing his shoe against the rough concrete roof, knocking a pebble loose and careening into ric’s foot. “i’m looking for someone.” 

“who?” 

“none of your business.” 

“your business is my business because we’re the same person,” ric points out. “so try again.” 

“i’m looking… i’m looking for who killed my parents,” dick admits in a low voice, not looking at ric again. ric tips his head to the side. 

“you’re… what?” 

“i want to know who did it. i know the lines didn’t snap, i just know it, because tati checks them before every show and they were fine before, i swear they were,” dick says in a rush, his breathing getting heavy. “and i saw someone arguing with mister haly before the circus, something about money, and he looked pretty mad so i think he might’ve had something to do with it. mami and tati wouldn’t just die like that.” his voice is wobbly by the time he finishes, about to fall into tears if he’s not careful, and that same old ghost pain twinges in ric’s chest. 

“so you went to the library?” 

“yeah,” dick says with a sniff. “i went to the police station first but no one would talk to me, ‘specially at night. they tried to call bruce but i didn’t know his number and then i climbed out of the bathroom window. so this is the next thing i thought of. haven’t gotten very far, though, even though i’ve been to so many libraries,” he ends, glum. ric pinches the bridge of his nose, trying to decide whether to laugh or to scream. 

he should’ve known better. he should’ve known his younger self was doing something like this but ric had hoped he’d interrupted that train. but it’s dick fucking grayson. of course he’s going to get involved, that’s what he _does_. that’s what they all tell ric he’s good for.

“oh my god,” ric says woodenly. “oh my god.” 

dick sniffs again. “what?” 

“i’m just amazed you haven’t been caught. by alfred, or by bruce, or by anyone, really. how have you managed that?” 

“well, i have a knife.” 

ric’s eyes nearly bug out of his head. “you _what_?” 

“a knife,” dick says, reaching around to dig around in his backpack. he pulls out one of alfred’s kitchen knives, the ones that sit on the counter, and brandishes it in his fist. “just in case.” 

“oh my god,” ric says one more time, disbelieving. “put that away before you get hurt. or better yet, give it to me.” 

dick frowns but holds it out for ric to take. ric’s two steps into his move when something lands on the roof, a heavy thud of heels against the concrete, and ric doesn’t even think. he just _acts,_ letting instinct take over, and he’s got the knife in his hand and one hand shoving dick behind him, both their backs to the door. every nerve in his body is alert and his mind feels clearer than it’s been in a long, long time, ready to defend them both. 

“oh,” ric says after a seconds-long staredown as he takes in the intruder, relaxing the tiniest bit. “it’s you.” 

dick flinches, fisting one hand in the back of ric’s shirt. batman’s white lenses narrow the tiniest bit.

“you keep saying that,” bruce rumbles in his low batman drawl, an octave lower than his normal register. ric can see how it would be scary if he didn’t know any better. 

“you keep startling me by showing up places uninvited.” 

bruce’s eyes narrow even more. “you shouldn’t be out here.” 

“yeah, well,” ric says, shifting the tiniest bit so bruce can see dick behind him. “i’m chasing a fugitive.” 

batman rears back as if he’s been hit, staring at dick as dick shrinks, squirming so he’s fully hidden again. “what is going on.” 

“not to say i told you so, but i was right about him sneaking out. he’s got a knife in his hand, by the way.” 

“don’t rat me out to batman,” dick pleads. “please, i don’t want to go back to jail. i didn’t do anything bad, i swear.” 

ric sighs. “you scared the kid, b. he thinks you’re going to haul his ass away, yet again. lovely that conversation hasn’t happened yet.” 

“i’m batman,” bruce says flatly, leaving out the _not bruce_ ric knows is supposed to be tacked on at the end. 

“mr. batman,” dick says, terror still radiating off of him. bruce stills, turning his head to where dick is peeking out around ric’s chest. “mr. batman, i’m not a bad guy, i promise.” 

“you don’t have to worry about that, kid. he knows,” ric says firmly and dick glances up at him, his eyebrows bunched together. 

“how do you know batman?” 

ric grimances and bruce echoes it across the roof, mouth turning down under the cowl. “let’s just say we’ve got a long and terrible history in my time.” 

“hn.” 

“what’s that supposed to mean?” 

“nothing,” ric tells him, frowning in bruce’s direction. “absolutely nothing.” 

“how’d you get here?” growls bruce. 

“walked. dick too, for the record. you’ve got a blind spot by the grove of trees by the east gate and a branch that goes over the wall.”

“hn,” bruce says again and ric knows he’s filing that away to fix tomorrow. tonight, even, depending on how early he wraps it up in the city. 

“can i say i told you so again?” 

bruce snorts. “no.”

“because i did.” 

“you accused me of training a robin,” he corrects, his tone still so flat that anyone who didn’t know him would never catch the annoyance. “you didn’t say anything about sneaking out to break into a library.” 

“pardon me for not being specific,” ric says, annoyed himself. “i’m not psychic.” 

“my mom used to call me robin,” dick whispers. he’s still so close that his body heat is just making ric sweat more, awful in the humid night. he wonders how bruce copes in all his armor. “why would batman be training _me_?” 

both ric and bruce freeze. 

“what?” ric asks. 

“you said that he accused you of training robin. _i’m_ robin.” 

“i wasn’t talking about you, kid. it’s someone else. not you, i promise.” 

“okay,” says dick, edging out from behind him. “but can it be?” 

ric snaps his head around to stare at the boy, but dick is staring at batman, his chin lifted up in defiance. 

“fuck no,” ric says but dick doesn’t listen, continuing like ric hasn’t spoken at all. 

“i’m trying to find out who killed my parents,” he tells batman, not wavering a little bit. “the police said it was an accident but i know it wasn’t. i _know._ you can teach me how to find them, can’t you? that’s what you do, you stop bad guys, and this one needs to be stopped. i’m a good student, i promise, ‘nd i’ll do whatever you say. _please_ , mr. batman. please.” 

bruce stares down at dick for a long, long time, like he’s in a trance, dick stares back and ric feels out the shape of his scar with his fingers, tracing against the raised edge on the side of his head. 

“no,” he says, half-strangled when bruce doesn’t immediately speak, throwing out his hand towards dick like he’s going to physically stop him. “no, you can’t.” 

“ric,” batman rumbles. the defeat in his tone sounds odd, out of place for the dark knight, but ric doesn’t care, not about this. 

“i don’t care, b. i don’t care what you’re thinking right now. you can’t train him to be robin, not now, not ever. you fucking can’t and i’ll do everything in my power to stop you.” 

“it’s not up to me,” he says helplessly and ric growls in frustration, shoving dick back behind him again. 

“of course it’s up to you, you fucker. you’re batman, of _course_ it’s up to you. he can’t do anything without your guidance.” 

“hey,” dick protests as he sidles away, glaring. “i can too do stuff.” 

ric ignores him, his gaze still locked on bruce’s face. bruce’s mouth twists and ric throws his hands up, so angry he thinks he might be glowing with it, a beacon to the top of this shitty library for everyone to see. 

“do you understand what’s going on? i died, b, several times over. don’t you get that? that’s what happens when you become robin, you are made into a weapon and then you get yourself almost killed in a thousand horrible ways until one day it _works_ , and there’s a dead child’s blood on your hands again. that’s what happens when you train a robin, batman. they _die._ ” he spits the last few words and bruce winces from the vitriol of it all. 

“you were robin?” dick asks quietly, off to the side. ric swallows hard. 

“a long, long time ago.” 

“with him?” he nods at batman and ric nods too, jerkily. “then you have to take me on. you have to, mr. batman.”

“no, listen to me,” ric nearly shouts, spinning dick around by the shoulder and bending down so they’re looking eye-to-eye, their faces close together. 

“listen to me, dick grayson. listen. do you understand what becoming robin means? it means _this_ ,” he jabs a finger at the terrible puckered skin on his head. “a fucking bullet in your head. you survive it, but barely. you become robin and there’s no going back, not now and not ever. you’re damned for the rest of your damn life.”

dick swallows, tracing the arc of the scar over ric’s ear, and then his eyes flit back to ric’s. “my life has been damned ever since my parents fell from the rope,” he says calmly, too calmly for a nine year old. “so it doesn’t really matter, does it?” he turns to batman who is watching them, still stunned. “i want to find the person who killed my parents, and i’m going to do it with or without you. so you might as well train me right so i don’t die.” 

ric thinks he might vomit. 

“fuck,” he says, dropping his hand off of dick’s shoulder. “fuck this, fuck revenge, and definitely fuck you,” he snarls at bruce and then wraps his arms around himself. “fuck it all to hell.” 

“i need to keep him safe, ric,” bruce says and every word is like a knife to ric’s chest. “you have to understand that.” 

“this is not how you keep him safe.” 

“it’s the only way i can think of right now. maybe in the future, we’ll find something, but not now.”

ric groans, squatting on his heels and putting his face in his hands, too hot and too full of emotion to do anything but ache. his head’s a whirlwind, too many thoughts trying to break out, and in the midst of it all, memories. they feel closer than ever, on the tip of his tongue and about to spill out, but just out of reach. 

“fuck,” he spits again. there’s a gentle press of a hand between his shoulders and he flinches at the weight of leather, even through the thin cotton of his shirt. 

“c’mon ric,” bruce says quietly. “you’re scaring dick.” 

ric pulls his palms away and turns his head, catching sight of dick’s white face as he stares at himself. he drags in a long, long breath of air, feels it fill his whole body, and then lets it out in a thin stream. 

“let’s go home,” bruce murmurs. “i’ll take you home.” 

“okay,” says ric. “okay.” 

the three of them climb their way down to the street, an odd trio as they follow bruce to where the batmobile is parked. dick slides into the backseat without complaint, curling up in his chair as the two adults sit up front. it’s a silent, fast ride back to bristol but dick falls asleep anyway, snoring gently against the window. 

bruce looks at him in the rearview mirror and curves off towards one of the secret entrances, pulling up into the batcave and cutting off the engine abruptly. 

‘i’m sorry,” ric say after a minute of deafening silence, his voice cracked and ragged. “i shouldn’t have… i’m sorry.”

hesitantly, bruce puts his hand on ric’s head, his large palm spreading out over the close cut of his hair and his fingers curling over to brush against the scar. ric closes his eyes at the feeling, nearer to tears than he had been a second ago.

“it’s okay,” bruce says, low, and slides his hand down to cup ric’s neck. “for what it’s worth, i am proud of you. i suspect your bruce is too. he would have to be.” 

ric lets himself lean into the weight of his hand and the comfort of the words for a long moment, letting it all ground him and settle somewhere next to his heart. 

‘thank you,” he manages to whisper. bruce nods and takes his hand away, leaving ric cold despite the heat. he heaves himself out of the car and reaches for dick, picking him up easily. 

“you’re not going back out tonight?” ric asks. bruce shakes his head. 

“there’s been enough excitement for one night, i think.” he cradles dick closer, dick’s legs slung over his forearm and dick’s head right over his heart. “i need to plan, anyway.” 

“are you going to tell him?” ric jerks his head at dick and bruce looks down at him, fond even under the cowl. 

“tomorrow, i think.” 

ric dips his chin and they make their way back up to the manor proper, ric still trailing his hand along the corridors. 

“why do you do that?” bruce wonders quietly as they’re almost to dick’s door. he shrugs. 

“dunno. someone told me once that i couldn’t get lost if i never took my hand off the wall, and i’ve just done it ever since. doesn’t really work, considering i can’t remember anything.” 

bruce is quiet for a moment as they settle dick in his bed, stripping off his shoes and pulling a sheet over his shoulders. 

“you’re here, aren’t you? don’t seem very lost to me.” 

“yeah,” says ric. “maybe.” 

“goodnight,” says bruce. 

“goodnight, bruce,” he echoes and they split at the end of the hallway, bruce heading off to do god knows what in the big house, and ric finding his way back to his bed, his head pounding and his chest tight. he lays down on his mattress and watches the shadows swirl, dancing on the ceiling as he falls asleep. 

he wakes up in an alleyway, slumped against his wall and his head pounding. six inches from his nose is a domino that doesn’t quite hide the worry in the owner’s eyes, doesn’t quite cover the lips pressed tightly together. 

“grayson,” damian says uncertainly— and it is uncertain, even though it comes out grumpy. ric remembers that still— his hands flying out to steady him. “what’s wrong? are you inebriated?” 

“hmm?” ric groans. the ground underneath him is wet, uncomfortably so, and it makes him shiver. his head hurts something awful, like his brain’s being scraped out and scrambled before being stuffed back into his skull. he might vomit. 

“how much have you been drinking?” 

“not much,” he manages to say, blinking furiously as he tries to bring everything into focus. “not at all.” 

“you’re in a puddle in an alleyway. public intoxication is a crime,” damian says solemnly and ric huffs out a laugh in spite of his thundering head. 

“not drunk. jus’ tired,” he slurs out, jerking his arm up to press against his eyes. damian scoffs. 

“this is foolhardy, even for you. i’m calling batman.” he turns away and presses a finger to his ear, no doubt activating the comm, and mumbles something ric can’t focus on. “what are you even doing in gotham, anyway?” 

“dunno. what year is it?” 

damian pauses, looking at him out of the corner of his eye. “grayson? are you feeling unwell?” he doesn’t wait for an answer, bending down to shine a penlight in ric’s face. ric flinches away from it, pain lancing through his brain. “i think you have a concussion.” 

“haven’t hit my head on anything.” 

“tt. concussions can cause memory loss.” 

“i’m an expert on that, kid,” he groans, pushing himself upright. “trust me.” 

there’s a flurry of noise and bruce rounds the corner, for once not trying to make an entrance as dramatic as possible. he stops by damian, chin tipped down as he evaluates the situation. 

“oh, it’s you,” ric grinds out and then laughs weakly. bruce’s mouth tips into a frown. 

“robin,” he growls. “report.”

“i heard a thump so i decided to investigate. i found him like this, injured. possible concussion.” 

“hn,” bruce says and leans down, stripping off his gauntlet to press his fingers against ric’s face. they’re cool, nice against the flushed skin of his cheeks. how can he be burning and freezing at the same time? “he’s running a low grade fever,” bruce announces and stands back up. so that’s how. 

“tt. what’s wrong with him?” 

“not sure but we need to get him back to the cave. ric, can you stand?” 

“yeah,” he mumbles, pressing against the ground. he doesn’t get very far. “maybe not.” 

bruce sighs, just a little, and then reaches for him, wrapping his hands around ric’s forearms and pulling gently. ric manages to get his legs underneath him after a scramble and then pauses, his stomach roiling and his head feeling like a bullet’s gone through it all over again. 

“wait,” he lets out when bruce keeps pulling, and bruce immediately stops. “fuck,” he says, and then doubles over, spitting out acrid bile onto the cracked pavement. damian jumps away in disgust. ric retches again, every spasm of his stomach making his head pulse, making him want to hurl once more. dimly, he feels himself collapse, crashing down hard on his knees, and would’ve fallen onto his face if he hadn’t been caught. 

“easy,” bruce says, as gently as he can. he’s got a hand braced against ric’s shoulder, warm and heavy. “easy, chum.” 

his face is wet with tears, his throat is burning, and all he wants to do is curl up on the ground in a ball, his arms wrapped around his knees, and not exist. 

“you done?” 

“for now,” ric says through his teeth, spitting the taste of vomit out of his mouth. “fuck.” 

“okay,” replies bruce and gently pushes him so he’s sitting up straight. “damian’s going to get the car. can you walk?” 

ric blinks slowly, trying to remember where his legs are and how they work. “uh.” 

“hn. here.” bruce pulls him carefully to his feet and then, with a motion too fast for ric to follow, sweeps him up into his arms, stumbling a bit under his weight. “oof.” 

“r’you saying m’fat?” ric mumbles, pressing his face to the cool armor of batman’s breastplate. bruce grunts, starting down the alley to where the batmobile is idling at the end. 

“this was easier when you were twelve.” 

“y’did this to dick too,” he sighs and closes his eyes against the shine of the streetlights. “i saw.”

“stay awake, grayson,” bruce orders sharply. the car is within arm’s reach, big and black and terrifying. ric doesn’t know how jason even had the guts to try and jack a tire off of it. 

“‘kay,” he says and he swears he tries, but the lights are too strong and the pain is too heavy and the darkness swallows him up in a single bite. he didn’t have a chance. 

he knows where he is as soon as he wakes up, recent memory overlapping with something older, something practically embedded into his bones. in the moment before he opens his eyes, everything around him is as familiar as breathing: the musty air of the cave, the coolness caressing his face, the slightly uncomfortable cot underneath him. it’s all something he remembers. 

it’s a good feeling to remember, even if it’s just something as small as this. 

he opens his eyes and stares up at the craggy ceilings, the shadows of bats playing on the rocks, and just breathes for a minute. his head still aches, though not as much as before, and his insides feel scraped and raw, tender to the touch. he turns and winces at the light coming in from the computers, dim but still sharp against his eyes. 

“what happened?” he croaks and bruce moves so he’s not silhouetted against the screens. 

“you tell me,” he says, voice carefully blank of any emotion. “robin found you half-conscious in the alley, and then you vomited and passed out. damian assumed it was alcohol, but you had nothing in your system to suggest otherwise, nor does it appear that you’re sick.” 

there’s not an _explain_ at the end, but ric can hear it tacked on anyway. 

“yeah, i remembered all that,” he groans as he sits up with a bit of effort, swinging his legs over the side of the cot and scrubbing a hand against his cheek. “fucking time travel.” 

bruce stills. “time travel?” 

“yeah,” ric says, still knuckling his eyes. they feel heavy, tired, itchy. he blinks a few times to clear the spots from his vision and winces at the way his headache settles over the bridge of his nose. “why didn’t you tell me i went back?” 

“because you didn’t,” bruce replies and sits back down in his chair. stretching his legs out in front of him. “is that where you went?” 

“mmhm. back to when i first was adopted by you. before i became robin.” 

there’s a moment of quiet. “that’s a long time.” 

“yeah, no shit. ah, fuck, my head.” 

bruce grunts, leaning over to rifle through a drawer in his desk. he throws something in ric’s direction and ric catches it instinctively. 

“ibuprofen,” says bruce when ric stares at the label for too long, trying to decipher the writing in the dim lighting. his eyes still don’t feel like they’re working right. “for the pain.” 

“thought i would be immune to this by now,” he grumbles as he shakes out a few into his palm. “that and my liver is shot.” 

“stomach.” 

“huh?” 

“nsaids are hard on your stomach. not your liver,” bruce corrects and passes him a water bottle. ric takes it, downing half of it in one go and wiping his mouth on his arm. 

“what do you mean i never went back?”

“in another timeline, maybe. it’s possible it created a offshoot, or even a completely different parallel universe, but as far as i know, ric grayson was not in my past.”

“huh,” he says. “we wondered.” 

“we?” 

“the other bruce. you were different,” ric says thoughtfully, twisting the water in his hands for wont of something to do. “less dense and a lot more talkative. angry.” 

bruce’s lips twitch and he slumps down more into his seat. “younger,” he answers. “you mean i was younger.”

“it was strange.” 

“everyone changes.” 

“you’re still angry. you just carry it differently now.” 

bruce stifles a yawn, running a hand over the side of his face and into his hair. “it comes with having children, i suppose. losing children.” 

“where is everyone?” 

“still out. damian is with cassandra for now.” 

“won’t they need you?” 

“they are fully capable of handling themselves, cassandra especially. besides, there is something more pressing that needs my attention now.” 

ric drags his finger down the seam of the plastic label, picking at the loose corner until more of the label unsticks, peeling away from the bottle beneath. 

“i was different too.” 

“i don’t doubt it.”

“i was angry too. angry and scared and so uncertain of everything around me. every _one_.” he smooths back the plastic but it refuses to stick again now that the glue’s gone, curling up in itself like a leaf. “i can’t remember what i was like back then or how it should’ve have been, but it all felt so _wrong._ ”

“i had forgotten,” bruce admits slowly, his gaze so intense that ric can almost feel it on his skin, “that you had been so… unlike yourself those first few months.”

“terrified. i was terrified.” 

“that too.”

“i have to know. i have to know, now that it’s all over and done. were you ever going to give me back?” he lets the question hang for a second and bruce’s eyes drop away, studying the arch of his toes instead. ric feels like he’s been all shaken up, like he might explode on a hairpin trigger at his next words. “be honest, bruce." 

bruce hesitates, going as still as a shadow for an inhale/exhale. 

"i thought about it," he admits in a low voice, like it's a confession. and it is, in a way. "back in the beginning, when you were so sad and broken and i didn't know what to do, i thought about it. sure, i had money, but there were so many other people who could've been so much better for you, every step of the way, and sometimes, i thought... i thought giving you back would be what you needed." 

it hurts, the honesty, like a sharp knife to the center of his chest, icy and cold. ric pulls in a breath through his nose. "okay," he says slowly. "okay, then why didn't you?" 

again, he hesitates, his hand shooting out to adjust the mouse so it’s in line with the keyboard.

“do you want the truth?” 

“yes,” ric answers without a second thought. bruce nods. 

“the truth is that i am incredibly selfish, ric. incredibly selfish. you came to the manor and it changed everything. it didn’t take long for the idea of letting you leave to become unbearable, even if it would’ve saved you a lot of pain in the future.” 

the words hang in the air and ric feels like he could breathe them in, feel the weight of them on his tongue and swallow them down to fester in his lungs. 

“why did you do it? why did you make me robin?” 

“i didn’t know-- i couldn’t have ever imagined what it would mean. none of it. but you needed _something_ , something to give you closure, and this was the only way i knew to give it to you. i’m not… proud of that, but it’s true.” 

“all the money and power in the world, and you give me something that kills me,” he says bitterly, crumpling the bottle in his hand. 

“there are things i should’ve done differently. i regret not protecting you better and i’m sorry-- so _goddamn_ sorry-- that it hurt you.”

bruce looks at him for a long minute, like he’s looking for something, and then reaches out. like the bruce of two decades and twelve hours ago, he brushes his fingers against the scar that cuts across ric’s scalp, slowly, so slowly, tracing the way it bends over his ear through his hair growing out. like before, ric closes his eyes at the feeling, almost too gentle for him to bear.

“but to be honest again,” bruce says, so softly ric can hardly hear it, his palm warm on ric’s head, “i don’t know if i regret taking you in, as my ward or as my robin. i should, probably, but i don’t think i can. one day, i hope you’ll forgive me for that.” 

“and if i don’t?” 

“i probably deserve it,” he admits and then pulls away. ric misses it immediately. “it’s your prerogative.” 

he opens his eyes. “i’m still so angry. angry and scared.”

“that’s nothing new, chum. for the both of us.”

they sit like that for a minute, bruce hunched over in his chair and ric sitting on the medical cot. there’s a pregnant sort of silence between them, heavy with too many things to say and not enough words to say them. ric chokes out a laugh. 

“have we done this before?” 

“sitting together in silence, angry?” bruce asks, his voice a low rumble like the sound of the earth moving. “a hundred times.” 

“you used to call me sweetheart,” ric says blankly, all of a sudden sure of that. bruce smiles the tiniest bit. 

“i call all my kids sweetheart,” he says. “when we’re not yelling at each other. you remember that?” 

“love is more thicker than forget,” ric mumbles without thinking, the taste of lavender tea on his tongue. bruce quirks an eyebrow. 

“e. e. cummings?” 

“alfred said it to me, when i was away. ‘love is more thicker than forget / more thinner--’” 

“‘more thinner than recall’,” bruce finishes. “‘more seldom than a wave is wet / more frequent than to fail.’ yes, i know.” 

“i think my body remembers what is to be loved by you all,” he says quietly. “even if i can’t remember who any of you are, my body knows what it used to be like part of the family, and it is unbearable. it’s part of the reason why i fucked off to bludhaven, because it felt like i was suffocating under it all. and then i went back to a time when you didn’t love me at all, not yet, and it was-- it was even more unbearable.” 

bruce makes a noise that sounds hurt, deep in his chest, and it makes ric’s lungs hurt too. “i have said this too many times for a good father to say, but i am sorry for how many times i caused you pain.” 

it feels like electricity bursting across his skin, a dull ache and a sharp pinch all at once, matched by the pounding of his head. it’s regret and repression and anger and fear and longing all stacked up inside of him until he’s ready to burst from it, setting his teeth on edge, making him want to turn his skin inside out just to get away from it all. if this is how dick fucking grayson lived every day, he’s not sure he ever wants to go back. 

“do you know how that poem ends?” 

“hmm?” ric mumbles, too preoccupied with not shaking apart. 

“the one by e. e. cummings. do you know how it ends?” bruce repeats and ric shakes his head. it feels like his brain is bouncing inside of his skull. bruce takes a breath and lets it out slowly, rattling it off like he’s heard it a thousand times. still, he’s gentle again in a way ric cannot take. “‘it is most sane and sunly / and more it cannot die / than all the sky which only / is higher than the sky’.”

ric digs his fingers into the mattress. “i think i’d like to leave now. back to bludhaven.” 

bruce nods. “of course. tim can drive you, but in the morning. he’s having a long night and you both need the rest. alright?” 

for a second, ric thinks about saying no, about stealing one of the many cars in the garage and just _leaving_ , letting someone else deal with the fallout. it’s tempting, but he’s in no shape to drive now, no shape to do anything more but sleep. 

“alright,” he echoes. 

“do you need to show me to your room?”

“i think i can find it,” he answers, getting up on unsteady legs. bruce makes an aborted movement, like he’s going to help him, but doesn’t. “goodnight, bruce.” 

“goodnight, ric,” bruce says. 

he’s halfway up the stairs when he stops, leans over the bannister. “bruce?” 

“yeah?” bruce answers, turning around to see him. ric hesitates; there’s a burning question on the tip of his tongue that he doesn’t know how to ask, doesn’t even know why he wants to ask it, but it feels like a necessity. 

“the other bruce, he said he was proud of me. is that… is that still true?” 

bruce stares at him for a long second, something unreadable in his face. 

“are you asking if i’m proud of you?” 

ric nods, apprehension twisting in his chest. he feels like a child again, desperate for approval. “when i’m like this, someone you don’t know.”

“always, sweetheart,” he says. “i’m always proud of you. even when you don’t remember who i am.”

“thank you,” ric says after a minute, the back of his neck hot. “i— thank you.” 

and with that, he presses his right hand to the wall and lets his feet lead him to his bed. 

true to his word, ric finds tim leaned up against the counter in the kitchen in the midmorning, one hand clutching a thermos of coffee and the other idly spinning car keys around his finger. 

“heyo,” he says when ric shuffles in. “bruce said you needed a ride?” 

ric nods, pouring himself a cup of coffee and sipping at it gingerly. “you up for it?” 

tim shrugs. “sure. it’s not a hard drive and i don’t have anything to do today.” 

“where’s everyone else?” 

“alfred took damian horseback riding on some trail, bruce has meetings, steph and duke are both studying, and cass is… cass.” 

“you don’t have anything to do?” 

“not anything worth doing,” tim answers, still spinning that key. “i can take a half day off.” 

“alright,” says ric. 

“ready to go when you are.” 

he swallows the last half of his coffee in three big gulps, dumping the empty cup in the sink. “i’m ready.” 

tim’s got the keys to a midrange, nondescript car-- a boring silver-- and ric sends a brief longing glance over to the classics on the other side of the room as he gets into the front seat. tim sets his thermos in the cupholder, adjusts his mirrors, slides a pair of sunglasses onto his nose, and zooms out the garage down the long, winding driveway. 

“here,” he says, tossing ric his phone. “you pick the music.” 

“what are you in the mood for?” 

“anything, i don’t care.” 

ric scrolls through the music library, his frown getting deeper and deeper as he reads the list of titles. “you’ve got an interesting taste in music. it’s all drake or my chemical romance.” 

“hey, they’re both timeless artists!” 

“yeah, if you’re emo. don’t you have anything good? like, from the eighties?” 

“we are _not_ listening to dad rock in this car, i don’t care how broken your brain is. it’ll make it worse,” tim says with a scowl and ric laughs in spite of himself, putting on an album that’s something between dad rock and emo to appease them both. tim nods in approval when the music starts playing. 

tim makes them go get bagels from a tiny shop just off the narrows, where the smell of yeast is heavy in the air, before they can leave gotham.

“they’re the best bagels in the world,” tim says as he orders a half-dozen. “plus, i’m hungry.”

“didn’t you just have breakfast?” 

“i’m a growing boy,” he replies without blinking, handing over a bill. 

“yeah, you got a long way to go,” ric mutters.

“watch it or i won’t give you a bagel.” 

ric laughs and they head back to the car, lattes and a brown bag clutched in their hands. tim cranks the music loud and drives with one hand on the wheel, his knee propped up on the seat, and holding a bagel to munch on with his other hand. ric leans his head against the window and curls his fingers around the heat of the coffee, idly swirling it around every once in a while. the road is busy, but not too busy, as they accelerate down the highway, and it’s comfortable. too familiar and not familiar at all, in that way that’s become more known to him than anything else since he woke up in the hospital all those months ago. 

“have we done this before?” ric asks as tim checks the mirrors, crosses lanes in one smooth motion. “this route? or just, like, in general?” 

“dunno. both?”

“both?”

“i stayed in bludhaven for a while,” tim answers, his back straight. “with cass. the three of us would go back to gotham every once in a while.” 

“oh.” 

tim looks at him sideways. “you taught me how to drive.”

“i did?” 

“mhm. i was fifteen and i could drive the batmobile and a motorcycle, but you said street cars were different. i guess you were right, sorta. you don’t usually drive to be safe as a vigilante.”

“i see.” 

“you were a good teacher,” he says after a moment. “patient. bruce couldn’t do it, not so soon after jason, when jason didn’t get a chance to learn. so you came down one weekend and took me out to an empty parking lot. we did donuts at the end and then we got bagels on the way home.”

“oh,” says ric again and their stop makes a lot more sense now. he doesn’t know what to say to that. “oh.”

there’s a long stretch of silence as the countryside sweeps by to a random soundtrack off tim’s phone, dotted with the occasional town in the distance, before tim speaks up again. 

“you went back in time?” 

“uh. yeah.” 

“when?” 

“my childhood. when i came to the manor. i was nine,” he says when he can see the question come up on tim’s face. “it was terrible.” 

“any idea what caused it?” 

“nope,” he answers, popping the p. “bruce did some tests and i’m sure he’ll have some theory that i don't want to know.” 

tim dips his chin and pushes his sunglasses up his nose a little. “why was it terrible?” 

“i knew something was wrong, could feel it way deep down in my bones, but i couldn’t figure out what because i didn’t remember.”

“that does sound like a nightmare,” tim says grimly, and ric doesn’t remember much about his history but he knows you don’t become robin if you had a healthy upbringing. “what brought you back?” 

“can’t tell you that either. i just woke up sick in an alleyway.” 

“you scared the shit out of damian. he thought you were dying.” 

“poor kid. should’ve said something to him later so he knew i was alright.” 

“he came back with you and didn’t go back out until bruce confirmed you weren’t in any danger.” tim makes a face. “you can’t say he’s not loyal.” 

“i can’t say a lot of things,” ric says dryly, shielding his eyes from the sun. 

“there are sunglasses in the side pocket,” tim tells him and he digs his hands around in the side until he comes up with a pair, sliding them onto his nose. they’re aviators, the round, chrome ones and tim smiles. “those are jason’s.” 

“somehow, that doesn’t surprise me.” 

they fall into a silence again, tim tapping his fingers on the steering wheel to the beat of the music and ric humming along occasionally, when the words come to him in snatches. 

“you good on gas?” 

“yup,” says tim. “filled it up last week.” 

“is this your car?” 

“close enough. it’s the one you taught me to drive in so i have an emotional attachment.” he pauses to imitate a drum solo. “damian was trying to get you to teach him when you left.” 

ric levels a look at him. “he’s thirteen.” 

“yeah, and he can already drive. he was just jealous that i did something he hadn’t. plus, i think he wanted the bonding time,” tim admits with a smile. “you said you were going to wait until fourteen, at least.”

“i still have a year left.” 

“four months, technically. if you’re. uh.” 

“back to normal?” 

“i was going to say _dick_ again. but normal works too. whatever the hell normal is for us.” 

“no such thing exists,” ric says and tim just smiles, taking a drink from his long-cold coffee. they pass the sign for bludhaven and he takes the exit and then a right, arriving into downtown. 

“where do you want to go?” 

“hmm? oh, uh. do you want to get lunch first? i know this really good burger place that’s close by.” 

“okay,” tim says after a second. “tell me where to go.” 

“take the next left,” ric tells him.

“you really know your way around bludhaven,” comments tim and ric shrugs, scratching under his shades. 

“hazards of being a taxi driver, i guess.” 

“i forgot about that. business good?” 

“it’s fine,” he answers. it’s actually been down in the past few weeks, but not enough to make him very worried. it ebbs and it flows, as the veteran drivers told him one of his first days. “there.” he points at a nondescript building with a few tables out front and a checkered awning. 

“when did you find out about this place?” tim asks when they’re halfway through their burgers, fingers messy with grease and ketchup and cheese. ric’s in the middle of a bite when he asks, so it takes a minute for him to swallow, wipe his mouth off with a cheap napkin. 

“uh, a couple weeks? passed by it on a route and just knew that it would be delicious, so i tried it out. why?” 

tim kicks his foot against the bench, banging his heel into the softened wood, and peels away the paper from the bun. 

“because we used to go here all the time.” 

ric stares. “what?” 

“you’n me. when i lived in bludhaven and you had time, we used to get burgers here when we had a chance. here and then milkshakes at the diner by the park when it was late. have you been there?” 

“dottie’s? yeah, once or twice.” 

tim nods, chewing on his burger. “you liked the cookie butter shake the best,” he says, slightly muffled. 

“huh. okay, good to know.” 

“m’pleasure. that’s what i miss the most.”

“the milkshakes at dottie’s?” 

he shakes his head, his feet still kicking furiously. “no. well, kinda. you were-- are-- my brother. i miss spending time with you. i’m not trying to guilt trip you or anything, but this morning has been, uh. nice. i missed it. miss. everyone does, but it’s been… hard at the manor with you gone. it’s why i drove you.” 

“bruce told me last night that you would, though.” 

“bruce knows everything,” tim says with a shrug. “he knew i would, and he knew i needed it. even if you do make fun of my music.” he pushes off of the table and drops to the ground, balling his wrapper up and tossing it neatly into the trash. “it’s been nice.” 

“next time i go back in time and wake up in the next city over and need a ride, i’ll make sure to let you know,” quips ric, throwing his own waste away. tim chuckles. 

“deal.” 

ric tells tim the name of the bar he was at before the whole incident, slightly surprised he can even remember where he was. his car’s still there, parked near the building and miraculously without a boot, or even a parking ticket. 

a rush of warmth goes through him when he sees it, like he’s coming home, even if home is a shitty car that smells faintly like french fries and beer most of the time, no matter how many times he gets it cleaned. his duffel bag full of clothes is even still in the backseat, spilling out onto the carpet. 

tim leaves him as soon as he finds his keys, waving goodbye as he peels out of the lot, blasting his music so loud ric can hear it from where he’s standing. it makes him laugh as he slides into the driver’s seat, his right hand loosely wrapped around the steering wheel. 

he sits in his car, warmed by the sunshine slicing across his window and watching the dust motes float through the air. he sits and he breathes and he watches, and feels the first stirrings of a memory breaking through. 

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading!! i hope you liked it!! if you want to chat about dick grayson or batfam in general, i'm over at @bigbrotherlouis on tumblr and always love talking about nightwing. 
> 
> [lowercase?](https://bigbrotherlouis.tumblr.com/lowercase)


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